Police on Monday recovered the bodies of the last two victims of the Bengaluru family murder case from a forest along Shiradi Ghat, about 260 km from the state capital, bringing the total number of recovered victims to seven and ending a search that spanned two states, Hindustan Times reported.

Source: Hindustan Times via The Daily Jagran

Earlier on Monday, IANS reported that police teams, accompanied by the accused, had reached Shiradi Ghat — a dense forest region spread across Karnataka's Hassan and Dakshina Kannada districts — to search for the bodies of his brother-in-law Shankar and sister-in-law Nalini, based on information provided by the accused. At that stage, five bodies had been recovered.

Source: IANS via HiIndia

A recovery spread across two states

The seven victims were traced site by site over four days. The youngest victim, a young boy, was found near Nandi Hills on the outskirts of Bengaluru on Friday. The bodies of the accused's wife Sunitha and her mother Roopavathi were traced near Salem in Tamil Nadu on Saturday. On Sunday, police recovered the bodies of Shivakumar and his wife Divya from two locations in the gorges beside the road at Chamundi Hills in Mysuru — one close to the roadside and the other retrieved from a deep gorge — and sent them for post-mortem examination, IANS reported. The Shiradi Ghat recovery on Monday completed the set.

The accused, Indushekar, also known as Indu Shekar or Sekar, a 52-year-old cab driver, was arrested by the Rajajinagar police for the alleged murders of seven members of his wife's family. Police allege the killings took place over about 20 days, between October 14 and November 3, at his house within the Rajajinagar police station limits, after which the bodies were allegedly transported and disposed of at different locations. The case began with a missing-person complaint registered at the Srirampura police station on November 3 and was later converted into a murder case at the Rajajinagar police station.

Investigators suspect the accused administered sedatives to the victims before the killings, and police have pointed to domestic disputes as the alleged motive; both remain allegations at this stage and are yet to be tested in court. Police have collected CCTV footage from shops and other locations, examined around 200 recordings, and are focusing on footage between October 14 and November 3 to establish the accused's movements and the sequence of events, IANS reported.

Awaaz Punjab earlier reported the accused's arrest and, on November 7, how the probe had widened to examine the possible role of the accused's minor daughter and the search then under way for the remaining bodies, when only one body had been recovered. Monday's recovery is the first time all seven victims have been accounted for.