Contradicting the police who said Mahesh K was picked up from his sister's house, locals have said they overpowered him and handed him over to the cops.
An eerie silence greets you inside the one BHK asbestos house at B Narayanapura in Bengaluru. It is the rented house of Shailaja, whose brother Mahesh K is in police custody for killing one girl and grievously injuring another girl with a country-made pistol at the Pragathi College in Kadugodi Police Station limits on Tuesday night.
Though very reluctant to speak, after a while, Dayananda HC says his brother-in-law deserves punishment for the heinous crime. “As a father, who lost a bright daughter to jaundice, I know how difficult it is to cope with the loss of a child. My wife Shailaja informed me over the phone when news broke about Mahesh’s involvement in the shooting. I had to rush home to my distraught family," says Dayananda who works as a technical staff at a vernacular daily.
Their landlord TK Tayappa was consoling them after the incident when Mahesh appeared at their doorstep. “Tayappa shouted and asked Mahesh why he had come back after committing such a crime,’’ Dayananda says. Tayappa told dna that he had advised Mahesh to surrender to the police. “Mahesh said that he would think about it. After some time, he wanted to go to the Mahadevapura Police Station to surrender, but changed his route towards the bus shelter on the Outer Ring Road. I managed to get hold of him at the bus shelter with the help of my friends and we informed the police who arrived at the spot within 10 minutes,’’ Tayappa says.
A tender coconut vendor near the bus shelter said the accused had threatened Tayappa and others, saying he would have killed all of them had they not tied his hands with a rope.
It may be recalled that Police Commissioner MN Reddi claimed that the police nabbed Mahesh from Shailaja’s house where he was hiding.
Speaking to dna, Shailja says that Mahesh had studied up to the Pre University Course and was good at studies, but was an introvert and never interacted much with others. “My mother Indiramma died in 2001 and father Umanath Acharya in 2011. In our community, it is the custom for the son to get married within one year of the father's death. We used to keep asking Mahesh to get married, but he would postpone it on one pretext or the other. Mahesh visited our home on Wednesday after a gap of six months. I never expected him to indulge in such a heinous crime,’’ Shailaja says.
Dayananda says he was planning to take his wife and daughter to Dharmasthala on Wednesday night, but had to cancel the trip due to this unfortunate and unforgivable incident.
For now, Shailaja is worried about the cascading effect of this incident on her daughter’s future who is preparing for her Common Entrance Test. “I lost my elder daughter to jaundice in 2013. She was a bright engineering student. My second daughter is also intelligent, but I am now a little worried about what effect this incident will have on her preparations,’’ she says.
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