P Chidambaram's kin murdered: Knitwear exporter abducted, killed and dumped in Hosur lake, 4 arrested

A relative of former Union minister P Chidambaram has reportedly been abducted and murdered, the police said on Wednesday, June 27. C. Shivamurthy, a 47-year-old Tirupur-based knitwear exporter and a distant kin of the Congress leader, had gone missing just a few days ago.

When he did not return home from work, his family filed a missing person complaint with the local police. However, it was later found that the businessman had been abducted and killed by a gang of three people.

Shivamurthy was the son-in-law of Chidambaram's sister-in-law, the police revealed, according to the Press Trust of India.

After receiving the complaint, the police launched a hunt for the businessman and managed to trace the movements of the victim's luxury car around midnight on June 25. This led them to Vengilli near Ambur on the Chennai-Bangalore national highway, from which three people were arrested on Tuesday, June 26.

The men, identified as Gouthaman, Vimal and Manibharati, were questioned and they confessed to the crime and said that they had dumped the body in a lake near Hosur.

Meanwhile, another person named Murthy was also arrested from Karamadai near Coimbatore. While the exact reason behind the killing is yet to be ascertained, it is also being said that Shivamurthy was mudered over an illicit affair he had with a woman, said to be Murthy's wife.

The four people decided to kill the businessman and hatched a plan, according to which Vimal took Sivamurthy to Metupalayam on the pretext of introducing him to a bank manager, who would lend him Rs 3 crore for his business.

The accused then gave Sivamurthy a drink laced with sedatives and strangulated him. Fearing arrest, they were on the way to Bengaluru to dispose the body. After their revelation, the fire and rescue services personnel looked for Shivamurthy's body for about three hours and it was finally fished out from the lake.