BENGALURU: A year after the brutal attack on 44-year-old Jyothi Uday at an ATM in the city, desperate city police are ready to reward anyone who can offer definite clues on the identity of the attacker.
On November 19, Jyothi was found lying in a pool of blood after she was attacked by a machete-wielding man who demanded money from her. She was found after school students walking by noticed blood coming from under the ATM shutter, about three hours later.
Although CCTV footage revealed the face of the man and this was distributed across the state and Andhra Pradesh, the police still have no idea who he is.
City Police Commissioner M N Reddi told Express that the case was being taken up as a priority. “What we need right now is to establish the identity of the man. Tracking him will be the next step. Unless we know who this man is, we will not be able to find him. We are contemplating to increase the award money and also thinking about giving it to anybody who can merely help us identify the man,” he said.
“Usually awards are given to people who provide information which leads to the arrest of accused persons. But in this case, someone who can give us secure information to just identify the accused will be entitled to the award,” he said.
Reddi added that the search for the attacker will be energised. “We are looking at whether new members need to be added to teams to energise and bring new perspectives to the case,” Reddi said.
Huge Team Searching Assailant
About 40 sub-inspectors are already involved in the investigation of the case, along with 10 inspectors, said a senior official.
“Teams are constantly on vigil, and we had received numerous calls claiming to have information about the man, but none of these materialised into something solid that led somewhere,” police officials involved in the investigation said.
“We know nothing about the man except what he looks like. To track him we need more information on him,” he said.
Photographs of the man were distributed in different areas of Karnataka and east Andhra Pradesh. These areas were also divided among the investigating teams.
“The commissioner has talked about adding new members to the team and we are looking at changing the operative functioning styles and maybe this will lead somewhere,” he said.
No Leads So Far
The state government had announced an award of `5 lakh for anyone who provided information leading to the arrest of the man. The city police got numerous calls from people claiming to have information. However, this neither led to the identification nor the arrest of the accused.