Murder for insurance: Nayak plotted murder for year

The last minute change saw Nayak and his son-in-law Tejavath Srinivas pick up one Babu from the Nizamabad Railway Station and kill him at Venkatapur village.

Medak: Secretariat employee P Dharma Nayak had been planning for a year to kill someone and fake his own death to claim insurance to recover the losses he suffered in online trading.

For this, Nayak identified a man, Anjaiah, at the Nampally Railway Station a few months ago, but he changed the plan at the last minute as Anjaiah had consumed liquor, which would make him ineligible for an insurance claim. The last minute change saw Nayak and his nephew Tejavath Srinivas pick up one Babu from the Nizamabad Railway Station and kill him at Venkatapur village in Tekmal Mandal the same night, on January 8. The charred body was then placed in Nayak’s car to make it appear that it was Nayak who died in the accident.

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Speaking to the media on Wednesday after the arrests of Nayak, Srinivas, Nayak’s wife Neela, his sister Sunanda and his minor son, Medak Superintendent of Police Rohini Priyadarshini said Nayak, 44, had suffered huge losses in online trading when Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war hit the stock markets. To recover from the losses to the tune of Rs.85 lakh, he hatched the plan with the support of Neela, Sunanda, Sunanda’s son Srinivas and Nayak’s minor son as well.

He then took 25 insurance policies from different insurance companies through which he was eligible for a huge insurance claim of Rs.7.4 crore. He then started to look for a man who resembled him closely at the Nampally Railway station after his office hours at the Telangana Secretariat. He first identified Anjaiah at Nampally Railway Station in November and befriended him, offering him a farm worker’s job at his farm in Nizamabad. He then bought the Honda Amaze car in December, the SP said.

On January 7, Nayak and Srinivas picked up Anjaiah from Nampally and proceeded to Nizamabad. As Anjaiah was drunk, they decided to wait for a day. However, Anjaiah, who went for lunch, did not return. They then selected another man, Babu, at the Nizamabad railway station. To make him look like Nayak, who was bald, they took Babu to Basara and convinced him to shave his head.

On their way back to Tekmal Mandal, they made him drink some toddy and asked him to sit in the front seat of the car. When they tried to pour petrol on him, Babu resisted, following which Nayak and Srinivas attacked him with an axe and sticks and killed him at Venkatapur. They set the car on fire before pushing it into the gorge at Venkatapur on January 8. The car with the charred body was found the following day by locals.

The Tekmal Police, who produced the arrested persons before court, have registered cases under IPC Sections 302, 364, 120B, 201, 202, and 212.