Hyd rape-murder accused found dead on train tracks
HYDERABAD: A 30-year-old man suspected of raping and murdering a six-year-old tribal girl in Hyderabad was found dead on railways tracks in Telangana’s Jangaon district, about 25km from Warangal town, on Thursday morning, police said.
Briefing reporters, Warangal commissioner of police Tarun Joshi said the mutilated body of the accused was found on tracks near Pamunuru village around 8.45am, minutes after the Bhubaneswar-Secunderabad Konark Express passed through the route. He said it appeared to be a case of suicide. “Some railway workers found the man walking on the track and tried to alert him but he did not listen. By the time they reached out to him, the speeding train had run over him, killing him on the spot.”
Railway workers informed the police who rushed to the spot. “The face was badly mutilated but we could identify him as the man who was accused in the rape and murder of the girl in Hyderabad last week, with the help of the tattoos on his hands,” the police commissioner said.
A search for the accused was on since September 9 when Hyderabad Police found the body of the minor girl in his room at Saidabad following a missing complaint by her parents. The postmortem report later revealed that the girl was brutally raped and strangled to death. On Wednesday, Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar announced a cash reward of ₹10 lakh for information related to the accused, amid protests by locals and an “encounter” threat by Telangana labour minister Ch Malla Reddy.
Reddy said on Tuesday the accused in the case would be caught and that there should be an “encounter”, a euphemism for extrajudicial killing. “There is no question of leaving him,” Reddy said at a party meeting.
Local residents demanded that the accused be killed in an encounter.
In 2019, a huge uproar had erupted over the encounter killing of four accused in the gangrape and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad. A three-member inquiry commission was set up to probe the circumstances leading to the encounter.
On Thursday, even though police called it a case of suicide, the deceased’s family claimed that the man was killed in an encounter. His mother told reporters in Nalgonda district that her son was caught by the police three days ago and, after subjecting him to torture, they forced him to jump in front of a running train. “The police had detained me and my daughterin-law for three days but nobody came to us for questioning. On Wednesday, suddenly, senior officials came to us and asked questions. They told us that my son had not been traced yet. But I overheard police officials saying that they had orders from higher-ups to kill him in an encounter. They let us off at around 10pm last night and this morning, we were told that he died by suicide,” she alleged.
Making similar allegations, the accused’s wife said: “The police took my signature on a blank paper but refused to tell me the reason for the same.”
The accused was booked for rape and murder, besides under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
Based on inputs from colony residents, police had widely circulated the identification marks of the accused, particularly the tattoos on his hand. The deceased was known to frequently sleep in bus stands and pavements, police said.
Warangal town assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Giri Kumar said the body was shifted to a hospital for a postmortem. “We have brought the brothersin-law of the deceased... who identified him based on the tattoos on his hand, his height and the clothes he was wearing...”
POLICE SAID THE MUTILATED BODY OF THE ACCUSED WAS FOUND ON TRACKS NEAR PAMUNURU VILLAGE EARLY ON THURSDAY