KAMAREDDY : What initially appeared to be a stray dog attack on a seven-month-old baby girl has turned out to be an attempted murder case, with Kamareddy police arresting the child’s father and stepmother for allegedly staging the incident to mislead investigators.
Banswada DSP B Vittal Reddy said the case came to light on July 15 after Sandhya reported her seven-month-old daughter, Vaishnavi, missing and expressed suspicion against her elder sister, Shailaja.
The infant was later found with multiple injuries in bushes, shifted to a hospital in Nizamabad and subsequently referred to Niloufer Hospital in Hyderabad, where she is undergoing treatment.
Police said Teku Sathish, a construction worker from Birkur, lived with his first wife, Shailaja, and their three daughters. He had also married Sandhya, Shailaja’s younger sister, and the couple had a daughter, Vaishnavi. Recurring family disputes and the burden of caring for the infant prompted Sathish and Shailaja to conspire to murder the child, police said.
According to the police, Sathish and Shailaja allegedly took the infant, who was asleep in her bed on the night of July 14, abandoned her on a road, dragged her for several metres and left her in a grassy area after injuring her with a blade.
Believing the child had died after her cries stopped, they returned home. The next day, they claimed the baby had gone missing and later attributed her injuries to a stray dog attack after she was found alive and taken to hospital. Police said technical evidence, eyewitness accounts and the accused’s statements exposed the alleged plot.
During interrogation, Sathish and Shailaja reportedly confessed to the crime. Further investigation is on.