VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh police are preparing to reopen 19-year-old B Pharmacy student Ayesha Meera’s rape and murder case on the directive of chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday, after main accused Satyam Babu was recently acquitted of all charges by the Hyderabad High Court.
Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday evening directed the police department to reopen investigations and arrest the actual perpetrators after reviewing the verdict at his office.
Ayesha Meera was found dead in the bathroom of the hostel at Ibrahimpatanm near here, in the early hours of December 27, 2007. The police after investigations concluded that she was first murdered and then raped by Satyam Babu, who they said was given to sexual perversions.
They alleged that Satyam Babu scaled the walls of her hostel, clobbered her with a chutney pounder and then dragged her to the bathroom where he outraged her modesty. The Mahila Court in Vijayawada, on September 10, 2010, convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
But recently, the Hyderabad High Court acquitted Satyam Babu of all charges and pointed out that in their anxiety to close the case and let the actual accused off the hook, the police had framed Satyam Babu in the case.
Though the police had been hoping that the State government would give them the green signal to go in for an appeal on the High Court verdict, chief minister N Chandrababu naidu had a different view on this.
At the review meeting with Director General of Police N Sambasiva Rao, the chief minister is understood to have made it clear that the police should re-investigate the case and bring to book the actual accused.
He reportedly pointed out that framing an old convict in the Ayesha Meera case cannot be condoned and that the police should start all over again and nail the actual culprits, when the police officials tried to persuade him to allow them to go in for an appeal.