Solving Crime: How a 2-second chat caught on tape saw Mangaluru cops crack horrific murder of a woman in 2019

“At this point, we did not know where the other body parts were. The person was yet to be identified. All we knew was that it was a woman and she had been decapitated,” he says.

A few minutes later, the police control room received another call saying that the residents near a Christian cemetery had found the torso of a body. The police rushed to the spot. By then, a few stray dogs had eaten some body parts and the police scoured the area, looking for other missing parts.

As the search continued, the control room passed on another message. Some passersby had reported finding legs by the roadside, a few kilometres away from the cemetery.

The police collected all the mangled body pieces and shifted them to Wenlock District Hospital. A message was also passed to the control room asking officials to check if any woman had been reported missing.

Around this time, Kishore Shetty approached Mangaluru South police station saying his sister Shrimathi Shetty, 39, was missing. “He shared a photo of his sister. When we took him to the mortuary, he identified Shrimati,” a police officer said.

The police had finally identified their victim.

Several suspects but no clear lead

A Mangaluru resident, 39-year-old Shrimathi Shetty used to run a chit business and an electronics shop, Polali Electricals, in the Kankanady area of the city. Shrimathi was married but was estranged from her husband. Though not legally separated, she had started living with another person named Sudeep, the police found. However, due to disputes, she broke up with him too.

“Shrimathi’s husband and Sudeep were our first suspects. We questioned her husband and he said he had not been in touch with Shrimathi for a long time. Sudeep was lodged in a Mangaluru jail in a theft case. When a police team interrogated him, Sudeep said he had lost contact with Shrimathi long back,” says Mahesh.

After checking the call details record (CDR) and intelligence inputs, the police were convinced that both men did not have any role in Shrimathi’s murder.

The police then went to Shrimathi’s shop and detained two employees. “They said that Shrimathi did not have any enemies,” says Mahesh. The police began checking the list of people who had borrowed money from Shrimathi.

“We also tried to figure out Shrimathi’s daily routine to know what time she went to work and what time she returned home. Shrimathi’s body parts were discovered on May 12 but we did not know when she had been murdered,” a police officer said.

The 2-second CCTV footage that revealed the killer

While tracing Shrimathi’s movements on May 11, 2019, the police found that she had left her home in the morning and reached her shop by 9 am. Her employees Nagaraj Naik and Venkesha confirmed this.

As the police began scanning footage from more than 100 CCTV cameras, at around 9.09 am, Shrimati was spotted heading towards Sooterpete on her two-wheeler. As she passed the St Antony Hardware shop, she stopped briefly, turned back and spoke to a man on a two-wheeler, the footage showed.

Both left the area after the less-than-two-second interaction. Shrimathi’s movements could not be tracked from this point.

The person last seen conversing with Shrimathi thus became a person of interest. The police identified him as Jhonas Samson, a 35-year-old kebab vendor. When the police cross-checked Shrimathi’s list of borrowers, they found a name – ‘Jonesh’.

The police believed they were getting close to cracking the case.

Suspects arrested, motive revealed

On May 14, 2019, the police reached Samson’s house but as soon as he saw them, he allegedly attempted to die by suicide. The police then entered the house by breaking the roof tiles and admitted Samson to Father Muller Hospital. After prolonged questioning, Samson allegedly confessed.

According to a police officer, Samson ran a kebab shop near Mangaluru beach. He had taken a loan of Rs 33,500 from Shrimathi and owed her Rs 16,000. Shrimathi used to ask Samson about the dues in public and once allegedly abused him in front of his friends.

On May 11, 2019, Shrimathi was heading towards Samson’s residence when she spotted him, the police learnt. “We asked him about the two-second conversation between them. Samson said that Shrimathi was heading to his residence and he told her that he would reach home in two minutes,” says Mahesh.

According to a police officer, in his statement to the police, Samson said that when Shrimati reached his house and insisted he repay the money, she was abusive in front of his wife Victoria Mathias (47). This did not go well with Samson. In a fit of rage, Samson hit Shrimathi twice with a wooden plank.

Samson and Victoria then cut Shrimati’s body into several pieces inside their bathroom and scattered the body parts across the city, a police officer said. Later, Samson allegedly kept Shrimati’s mobile phone inside her two-wheeler and parked it near a police station. Victoria cleaned the house and left for her sister’s house, the officer added.

Sentenced to life

Samson and Victoria were arrested on May 15, 2019. The police found 42 injuries on Shrimathi’s body. A chargesheet was filed with 48 witness statements. With the Covid-19 pandemic affecting the court process, the trial in the case began on July 14, 2022. On September 13 this year, the first additional district and sessions court of Dakshina Kannada sentenced the couple to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000.