Bhubaneswar: An alleged "psycho killer" arrested in Odisha’s Cuttack for the three sensational murders of homeless people in the city in a span of 24 hours is a person suspected to have lost his mental balance after meeting failure in a number of businesses he undertook.
Even as the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionerate Police claim that Narayan Sahu, aged about 38 and picked up from his home in Nayagarh district on Monday, is the culprit who committed the triple murders, his family claims he is innocent and was not even present in the city on the two days.
The accused's father, Dayanidhi Sahu, and wife, Gitanjali Sahu, told the Nayagarh Superintendent of Police Dilip Sahani on Wednesday that Sahu was at his elder sister’s house in Bhubaneswar on July 22 and at his home in Nayagarh’s Sunamuhin village on July 23.
The badly-hacked body of a middle-aged man was recovered in Ranihat area of Cuttack on the morning of July 23. Two more bodies with similar injuries were recovered from Chauliaganj and Mangalabag areas of the city the next morning. A sharp and heavy weapon was suspected to have been used to kill the three homeless people who were sleeping on the footpaths.
After visiting the crime spots, twin-city police commissioner Satyajit Mohanty had said, “These three murders seem to have been committed by the same person… considering the nature of the murders, we can say this is the work of a psycho killer.”
But an inconsolable Dayanidi Sahu dismissed the allegations. “It is impossible that my younger son has killed anyone. He has been mentally unbalanced for the past several months after suffering losses in his business, but he is not the kind of man who can kill anyone. He has been arrested on totally wrong suspicion,” said the father after submitting a written plea to SP Sahani.
Sahu's wife, who was accompanied by her two minor children, asked, “How can he kill anyone on those two nights when he was not even in Cuttack? He never had a violent streak in him, not even after he appeared to be mentally deranged following the loss of our house to his creditors. He must be released immediately.”
After working for three years at textile mills in Gujarat’s Surat, Sahu had returned home in 2006 and started several businesses at Kumpapada in Ganjam district, around 5 km from his home, said those close to his family. But those ventures had failed to succeed.
Sahu ran a shop selling glass bangles at Kumpapada for about three years, then a footwear shop before switching to the sale of silver ornaments. He built a two-storey house at Kumpapada with loans taken from a few friends. But he failed to repay them and was forced to hand over the ownership of his house to the biggest lender around a year-and-a-half ago.
Mounting financial crisis prompted Sahu's wife to leave him and live at her parents’ home with their children. Sahu, meanwhile, roamed around, visiting relatives and passing days at his parents’ house.
Sources said Sahu was taken to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack by his elder sister for psychiatric treatment around six months ago, but he had left a few days later without informing anyone.
(With inputs from Nabakishore Mishra)
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