Goa's 1st BNS murder case: Man kills pal over half a bottle of booze

VASCO: Goa police on Wednesday filed the state's first murder case under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) after a Cortalim resident was killed by his friend over half a bottle of liquor.
Lionel alias Pinku Lobo, 32, a resident of Pajentar, Cortalim, was sleeping in an under-construction building when Maddant resident Alex Xavier Coutinho, 34, smashed a cement block on his head, killing him.
Police said that both Coutinho and Lobo were habitual drinkers, and that Coutinho was seeking revenge on his friend for taking a liquor bottle he had bought. The deceased and accused were both drunk when the crime took place, police said.
Explaining the sequence of events preceding the murder, South Goa SP Sunita Sawant said that around 10 days ago, Lobo carried home a liquor bottle that Coutinho had bought, after consuming some of its contents. "The accused was annoyed and was waiting for an opportunity to take back his bottle."
She said that since both of them usually met to drink at the under-construction site of a building at Pajentar, Cortalim, Coutinho decided to take a chance and visited the site at around 7pm on Tuesday. As he found Lobo sleeping after consuming alcohol, Coutinho, in a fit of anger, took a cement block and hammered it on his friend's head. "The head of the deceased was totally smashed with multiple cracks," said Sawant.
The SP said that when the building owner learnt about the incident, he informed Verna police. Police found Lobo’s body in a pool of blood. Sawant said that primafacie, revenge was the motive. She also said that Coutinho, who was some distance from the crime site, tried to misguide police. “However, based on several clues, Verna police cracked the case within 16 hours,” she said. Coutinho has been arrested under Section 103 of the BNS, which replaced the Indian Penal Code’s Section 302. Lobo’s body has been preserved for an autopsy.