In 2020-2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic left elderly parents increasingly isolated from their adult children living elsewhere, a Mangaluru family did what many did during that period – hire a caregiver to look after their ageing parents. Six months later, the woman of the household died, and what at first was considered a natural death soon turned out to be the result of a sinister plot.On January 26, 2021, around 6.10 pm, Ronald Carlo, then a 42-year-old electrician, received a call from his sister-in-law Violet that his mother, Benedict Carlo, had become unconscious.Benedict Carlo, 72, suffered from age-related illnesses. The woman had seven children – six sons and a daughter – and none stayed with her. A few months before his mother’s death, Ronald had hired his distant relative Elma Preschith Baretto, then 23, to take care of his parents. Benedict’s husband was also ailing and left bedridden after a paralytic stroke.Ronald shifted his mother to a hospital, hoping the doctors would be able to revive her. Benedict was diabetic and a blood pressure patient. But the doctors at the hospital informed him that Benedict was brought dead.But soon after, doctors felt there was something suspicious about the death. According to a police officer, doctors said that Benedict had injuries on her neck, shoulder, and left hand. Thereafter, they shifted the body for a post-mortem examination.Meanwhile, Ronald tried to contact Baretto, but the calls went unanswered. The Bantwal rural police were informed about the death, and Police Sub-Inspector Prasanna visited the spot.Prasanna asked Ronald to check if something was missing from his residence. Upon checking, a gold chain with a Jesus cross, seven finger rings, a pair of bangles, earrings, and a thali were found missing. It became evident to the family and the police that Benedict Carlo did not die naturally.Story continues below this adAfter the post-mortem, the body was handed over to the family, and the final rites were performed. But all this while, Baretto stayed away.“It was at this point that our investigation pointed towards Baretto, who had taken care of Benedict for six months, had not attended the final rites and was avoiding phone calls,” a police officer said.T D Nagaraj, then a police inspector at the Bantwal Rural police station, recalled, “In one of the calls made by Ronald, which Baretto had answered, Ronald had asked her why she did not turn up for the funeral, and her response was ‘I did not do anything’. It was quite an unusual response.”On February 2, 2021, the police picked up Baretto for questioning. Meanwhile, they also found out that a person came to drop off and pick up Baretto from work for the last three to four days before Benedict’s death. Armed with this information, the police questioned Baretto, who revealed that the person in question was her boyfriend Satisha A R.Story continues below this adSatisha, who is also from Bantwal taluk, was taken into police custody. “We questioned them in separate rooms. We told Satisha that Baretto had confessed and had spoken about his involvement, and there was no chance to escape. Whereas we told Baretto that Satisha had confessed to the crime. Thereafter, they began to confess,” a police officer said.It turned out that both Satisha and Baretto had hatched the plan to steal valuables. Nagaraj, the investigating officer in the case, said, “Their initial plan was to slowly poison Benedict. Baretto used to mix pesticides in coffee or tea. But it did not affect Benedict much. Then they decided to kill her. It was at this point that Satisha took the help of his friend Charan Kumar.”The police said their probe revealed that Charan came to the house and suffocated Benedict with a pillow while Baretto restrained the victim by holding on to her leg.The police then arrested Charan Kumar and recovered the gold ornaments from the possession of the accused.WhatsApp chatsStory continues below this adAccording to court documents, 99 calls were exchanged between Charan and Satisha from the night of January 25, 2021, till the evening of January 26, 2021. Between Baretto and Satisha, 31 calls were exchanged during the same period. No calls were exchanged between Charan and Baretto.The police also found that a lot of SMS, WhatsApp chats and audio notes were shared among the accused. The police were able to recover some of the WhatsApp audio notes indicative of the accused’s involvement in the murder. “We took the audio samples of the accused and sent them to the Forensic Science Laboratory. The report suggested that the voice samples matched the conversations that the police had retrieved from the mobile phones,” an officer said.The Bantwal Rural police filed a chargesheet against Baretto, Charan and Satisha before a local court. All the accused, though, came out on bail in December 2021.After the trial, the second additional district and sessions court of Dakshina Kannada district convicted all three accused and awarded them life imprisonment on July 23 this year.Story continues below this adWith no eyewitness to the crime, the prosecution relied upon three aspects – motive (murder for gain), last seen theory (presence of accused), and seizure of the materials from the accused.Also Read | After Karnataka amends Bengaluru mobility law, BJP’s Tejasvi Surya writes to GovernorIn his order, Judge Jagadeesh V N said, “I have gone through the entire evidence placed on record… the case of the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence… Accused Nos. 1 to 3 have hatched a plan to commit the murder of the deceased for gain… and robbed gold articles of the deceased.”Nagaraj said it was a challenging case as there was no eyewitness to the incident. “Had doctors or family members been a little less observant, the crime would have just vanished as another natural death. But everyone played their role responsibly. The case was built totally on technical and medical evidence, but the chain of events was established without any gaps. Most importantly, prosecution witnesses appeared before the court and supported the case,” he added.