Mandya: Srirangapatna Town Police have arrested five persons, who had allegedly murdered a youth brutally with lethal weapons at Karekura village in Srirangapatna on Mar. 3 night.

While the arrested are 34-year-old Raghavendra, 24-year-old Abhishek, 24-year-old Swamy and 24-year-old Kumar, all from Hosahalli village and 24-year-old Ravi of Yelwal. The murdered youth was Sagar (29), son of Mahadeva and a resident of Karekura village..

All the five accused, after murdering Sagar, had fled to Male Mahadeshwara Hills (M.M. Hills) and were hiding there. Srirangapatna Town Police, acting on a tip off, went to M.M. Hills on Wednesday and were succeeded in arresting the five accused.

Reason for murder: According to Police, deceased Sagar and the five accused were friends and last year during the celebration of a festival at Hosahalli, a fight had taken place between them over a flex. Sagar had got the photos of the accused removed from the flex, which had angered them and they were said to be waiting for an opportunity to kill Sagar.

On Mar. 3 at about 10.30 pm, they waylaid Sagar at Karekura village, attacked him with lethal weapons and killed him by slitting his (Sagar) throat. They later dumped his body at the side of an agricultural field.

According to sources, the accused had vowed to tonsure their head at M.M. Hills and after committing the murder, all the five accused had gone to M.M. Hills and fulfilled their vows. They went into hiding in M.M. Hills anticipating that the issue would calm down soon.

Mandya Superintendent of Police (SP) N. Yatish, Additional SP Venugopal and Dy.SP N. Sandesh Kumar guided Srirangapatna Town Inspector Puneetkumar, SI Rekha and staff Vyramudi, B.C. Krishna, Vijaykumar, Umesh, Prasannakumar, Manjunath, Purushotham, Mahadevaswamy, Ravikiran and Lokesh in the nabbing operation.