|HT|
Telangana police arrested a 25-year-old man on Wednesday for allegedly raping and murdering a 23-year-old tribal woman in the Yadadri Bhongir district, about 40 km from Hyderabad, officials said. According to police, the incident occurred on Monday evening in Toopranpet village of Choutuppal block in the district.
“We produced him before the local court in the afternoon, and he was sent to judicial custody for 14 days,” Choutuppal assistant commissioner of police (ACP) N Uday Reddy said.
The accused, who hails from the Zaheerabad area of Sangareddy district, is booked under sections 376 (rape), 392 (robbery) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), besides the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, police said.
According to ACP Reddy, the woman and her husband migrated from a tribal hamlet of Koduru block in Nagarkurnool district to Choutuppal block a few months ago in search of livelihood.
The couple lived in a hut near a warehouse in Toopranpet village, where the husband was working as a night watchman. “During the daytime, the husband was also working as a security guard at an engineering college nearby,” he said. On Monday evening, the accused, who was working in a brick-making unit nearby, noticed the woman alone and attempted to sexually assault her. “The woman resisted him, but he dragged her to a haystack in the nearby fields and raped her,” Reddy said.
When the woman tried to raise an alarm and run away from the spot, the accused attacked her with a log repeatedly on her face and head. “When she fell unconscious, he raped her again, before fleeing the spot. He also took away the golden mangal sutra and silver anklets from her body,” the ACP said.
The victim’s husband, who returned home at around 8 pm, could not find her and started searching for her. At around 10 pm, he found her body in a pool of blood and disrobed. He immediately brought it to the notice of Choutuppal police, who rushed to the spot and shifted her to the local hospital, where she was declared brought dead. “We took up the investigation and, using dog squads and other evidence collected from the spot, managed to track down the suspect within 24 hours. After due interrogation, we arrested him. He was arrested from his work spot at brick-making unit near Choutuppal,” the ACP said.
The post-mortem of the victim’s body revealed that she was raped twice and had sustained grievous injuries on her head. “We handed over the body of the victim to her relatives on Tuesday evening,” Reddy added.
(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)