Bengaluru police have formed eight special teams to trace two suspects allegedly involved in the murder of lawyer and landlord Manjunath, 42, in Pattandur Agrahara, with searches under way across several cities including Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and locations in Bihar.
The Whitefield division police said the suspects had been identified as Ankit and Pawan, both from Bihar, and had worked as delivery workers in Bengaluru for about two years. Whitefield division Deputy Commissioner of Police Saidulla Adavat said one suspect travelled to Chennai by train after the incident, while the other allegedly left for Hyderabad on a two-wheeler.
According to the police, the murder followed a dispute over unpaid rent. Manjunath owned between two and three acres of vacant land in Pattandur Agrahara, where sheds had been built and rented to migrant workers from Assam, Bihar, Odisha and other parts of north India. The rent for each unit reportedly ranged from ₹5,000 to ₹8,000 a month.
Police said Ankit, Pawan and two other workers had been occupying one of the sheds and had not paid rent for four months. Manjunath and the tenants had argued over the issue several days before the killing, according to the report.
On the night of October 18, Manjunath allegedly went to the tenants’ accommodation to demand the rent, after which the dispute escalated. Police sources said the suspects later arrived near Manjunath’s house on a motorcycle used for food delivery work and called him outside. While he was counting money, the assailants allegedly fired three rounds from a country-made pistol, striking his forehead and chest, before fleeing.
The police have sought technical assistance from the Central Crime Branch in the investigation. Teams have been deployed in multiple locations to trace the suspects, while senior officers are monitoring the case, DCP Adavat said. He added that the investigation was progressing under the direction of senior officials and that no negligence had been shown in the probe.
The case highlights the often informal nature of rental arrangements in Bengaluru’s expanding employment corridors, where vacant land is converted into low-cost accommodation for migrant workers. The police account indicates that the dispute involved a private landlord, shared rental housing and workers employed in the city’s delivery economy. However, the investigation and the allegations against the identified suspects remain subject to due process.
The police teams will continue searches in the identified cities, with the immediate objective of locating and arresting the two suspects.
