A 48-year-old woman is accused of hiring contract killers to bump off her 54-year-old husband whom she saw as a “serial philanderer”. She paid them Rs 2 lakh upfront and offered a further Rs 28 lakh after the killing.

Doreen Kumar, a resident of Jogupalya in Halasuru, has been arrested, along with four suspected assassins, for the gruesome murder of her moneylender husband, G Kumar. The victim was found murdered near the railway track close to the Kalapalli cemetery in Baiyappanahalli, east Bengaluru, on April 6, 2017.

Doreen, police say, was disgusted with her husband’s “philandering ways”. Kumar would sexually exploit women borrowers when they defaulted on loan repayment. He would bring random women into his house and seek sexual favours from them.

His womanising had been going on for several years now. Doreen knew it all but had kept quiet. But she could not tolerate it any more and decided to eliminate her husband. But taking out a man of Kumar’s size was a knotty question.

She came across one of her husband’s customers, a man named Sridhar who had borrowed Rs 5 lakh from him and was struggling to repay it. She got close to him and confided in him. She offered him Rs 30 lakh for the job, besides waiving the loan. She paid him Rs 2 lakh upfront.

Sridhar, police say, roped in four of his friends — Prabhu (35), Patrick (25), Dinesh (29) and Avinash (30) — who all had criminal record. He got a woman named Clara to get Kumar to the crime spot. Clara hired another woman, Revathi, for the job. Revathi called up Kumar and introduced herself as Lakshmi. She called him to the railway track on the pretext of taking a loan to pay her four children’s school fees.

Kumar walked into the trap. As soon as he turned up, the assassins hacked him with sharp weapons. Interestingly, Doreen herself went to the jurisdictional Baiyappanahalli police station and lodged a complaint. As police got to work, they checked Kumar’s call detail record and found that the last caller was Clara.

They picked her up for questioning. Clara led them to Dinesh. He couldn’t withstand sustained interrogation and spilled the beans. He told the police that he, along with Avinash and Patrick, had attacked Kumar at the behest of Sridhar and Prabhu. Police picked up Doreen soon afterwards.

A senior police officer suspected that Sridhar and Doreen were planning a “life together” once Kumar was eliminated. Police have seized Rs 1.4 lakh in cash from the suspects. Avinash is absconding while Clara and Revathi are under surveillance. Police are still investigating whether the women were part of the murder conspiracy.