Picture used for representational purpose only

CHENNAI: A police team investigating the September 14 death of a woman in Kodungaiyur found that her 34-year-old house owner had strangled her because the 68-year-old a week earlier took offence when he called her grandma and abused him.

Police who had earlier registered the death of Vimala Govindaraj under CrPC Section 174 (unnatural death) altered it on Sunday and charged Sudhakar, a welder who had rented out a portion of his house to a tenant, with murder under IPC Section 302. A magistrate’s court later sent him to jail.

After Vimala was found dead in her house, the woman’s family members lodged a complaint with police saying she often suffered seizures and that she may have fallen down and died. However, the autopsy report by doctors at the government hospital concerned confirmed that Vimala had been stranguled. A special police team was soon formed and its members began making inquiries with the neighbours of the deceased woman and others in the area.

A few people told investigators that Vimala was very conscious of her looks and was often spotted in the neighbourhood, neatly ‘made-up’ even at night. She had been staying by herself in a portion of Sudhakar’s house, subsisting on the mothly pension from her late husband’s employers. Her husband Govindaraj, a checking inspector with the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), had died a few years ago. Vimala’s two sons and two daughters, who are married, live with their spouses elsewher in the city, police said.

In the first week of September, a police officer said, Sudhakar was feeding his pet when Vimala passed by and he hailed her as grandmother. Incensed, the woman hurled the choicest of abuses on him and told him to address her properly in future, the officer said, based on Sudhakar’s statement. On September 14, a drunk Sudhakar barged into Vimala’s house and attacked her on the neck before strangling her. Then he went home.

The next day, police recovered Vimala’s body and closed the case as an unnatural death. After the postmortem report confirmed murder, police began probing further and finally nabbed Sudhakar.

