Special Investigation Team Widens Net In Elderly Couple Murder Case

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): With investigators yet to make a breakthrough in the sensational murder of a retired railway employee and his wife in Aishbagh's Sudama Nagar, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has widened the probe, focusing on the couple's extended family in an attempt to uncover the motive behind the killings.

According to police sources, the SIT is preparing a list of all relatives of Hemant Barik alias Hemant Philemone and his wife, Shakuntala, including those who were not in regular contact with the elderly couple.

Each relative will be questioned individually and face to face to identify possible disputes, hidden family issues or any information that may have been overlooked during the initial investigation.

So far, investigators have failed to establish either the identity of the killers or the motive behind the murders.

Police have already examined CCTV footage from the neighbourhood and questioned several people, but none of it has yielded any significant breakthrough.

Police commissioner Sanjay Kumar said that besides the SIT, nearly 100 police personnel have been deployed exclusively for the investigation.

Teams are scanning footage from private surveillance cameras installed across Aishbagh and adjoining localities, along with the city's Smart City CCTV network, to reconstruct the suspects' movements and identify possible escape routes after the crime.

The decomposed bodies of 64-year-old Hemant Barik, a retired railway employee, and his 62-year-old wife, Shakuntala, a retired nurse, were found inside their Sudama Nagar residence on Friday after neighbours alerted police about a foul smell emanating from the house.

The postmortem report later confirmed that the couple had been shot dead. The childless couple lived alone, while a portion of their house had been rented out to students.