‘De-mon, debts made Ganesh pull trigger’

It was the slump in the real estate sector and demonetisation that eventually pushed realtor Ganesh H K (49) to take the extreme step of killing his wife and shooting at his children. In a chilling confession to the police, Ganesh reportedly blamed demonetisation for his present mess.

Ganesh shot his wife Sahana dead at their house in Jayanagar on Thursday morning and shot at their children Siddarth and Sakshi at his farmhouse on Kanakapura Road after picking them up from school.

Trapped in debt after investing heavily in realty, Ganesh was apparently under tremendous pressure to repay loans of Rs 25 crore. While he contemplated selling the property to bail the family out of the financial crisis, his wife Sahana turned out to be a major hurdle.

According to police sources, despite several attempts, Ganesh could not mobilise funds. “Often, customers interested in his properties offered half the price he quoted citing demonetisation. All attempts to raise funds to repay the mounting debt further made him desperate,” an official attached to the Jayanagar police revealed.

According to the police, Ganesh was unable to pay even the EMIs that had already begun to stack up with recovery agents pestering him constantly. Probably, this pressure forced him to pull the trigger on his family.

The Jayanagar police, on Saturday, produced Ganesh before a magistrate and sought custody for one day for interrogation after which the Kaggalipura police will take his custody to interrogate him in the attempt to murder cases on his two children. Based on an oral statement from Ganesh’s son Siddarth, the Kaggalipura police registered a case of two attempts to murder and will interrogate him shortly, a senior police officer said.

Children’s ordeal

After shooting Siddarth and Sakshi around 4.30 pm on Thursday at the farmhouse, he put them on the back seat of his SUV, padded them with bed-sheets and cushions before taking them on a long drive. Enroute, the two children were writhing in pain and begging for water, but Ganesh continued to drive, constantly checking whether they had died.

However, according to the police, Ganesh took chances at a few locations to stop the car near small tea-shops with the windows raised so that the crying children would not raise the locals’ suspicion. As he sat behind the wheel, he offered the children breadcrumbs and a few sips of
water.

But by early morning, Ganesh’s heart softened and he began tending to the children. He drove towards the farmhouse only to be caught by the police on the way.

Children critical

Siddarth and Sakshi remain to be critical after surgeries and they remain under observation of the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Konankunte. Meanwhile, Sahana’s parents claimed her body after postmortem at KIMS Hospital on Saturday. They took the body home for her last rites.