Bengaluru: The police have cracked the murder of a house theft offender, whose body was found in a drain in Kengeri. Six workers of a bar have been arrested in this connection. They had allegedly killed the victim, Suresh alias Lodde (30) of Uttarahalli, after he refused to pay the restaurant and liquor bills and threatened the staff with lethal weapons.

The accused have been identified as Suresh alias Suri, 28, Shivakumar alias Kumara, 24, Avinash alias Avi, 22, Kanakaraj alias Kanaka, 24, Somashekhar alias Soma, 19, and N. Nagaraja, 38. They were working in Hamsa bar & restaurant on Chikkalasandra Main Road in Uttarahalli.

According to the police, the body of an unidentified man was found in the storm water drain that passes by the farm belonging to one, Krishnappa, behind Venkateshwara Theatre on Vidyapeeta Road in Kengeri, on March 3. The assailants had tied legs, hands and neck of the body using a single cable and thrown it in the drain a few days before it surfaced.

“It was a case of murder. The assailants had left the mobile phone of the deceased with him. Though the phone was damaged, the SIM card helped us identify the deceased. We contacted his family members with the help of numbers stored in the SIM card. Later, the tower locations of his mobile phone was traced and the last point of receiving signal was in Chikkalasandra,” an official said.

The Kengeri police found that Suresh was last seen at Hamsa bar & restaurant. When the bar employees were questioned, they gave contradictory versions. When grilled thoroughly, they confessed to the murder, the official added.

“Suresh was a regular customer, but never paid the bills. The bar staff were fed up of him as he was threatening them with lethal weapons and assaulting them if they asked him to pay the bill. Even on February 28 around 11.15 pm, Suresh consumed alcohol and threatened the staff with a machete. But the staff overpowered and assaulted him. They strangulated him to death using a cable and tied his hands and legs with the same cable,” an official said.