HYDERABAD: Former Shadnagar ACP V Surender deposed before the three-member judicial commission probing the death of the four accused in the rape and murder case of a veterinarian at Shadnagar in 2019, and said that errors found in the case diary were ‘copy-paste’ errors.
Surender was the investigating officer (IO) in the case and had also led the police party escorting the accused for recovery of the victim’s articles on December 6, 2019, during which the accused attacked the police, snatched their weapons and fired at them, resulting in an ‘exchange of fire’, leading to the death of all the accused. He stated that the accused were arrested on November 29, 2019 at 5 pm and after recording their confessional statements, he had issued an arrest memo and court surrender memo.
“I had interrogated them for 15 minutes, and after they confessed to the offence, I arrested them,” Surender said. He said that he did not record in the case diary the fact that the accused confessed to the offence before their arrest was recorded, as a confession made in his pres-ence was not valid. He also did not record in the diary that he interrogated them prior to their arrest. He said that the accused were apprehended based on information given by the lorry owner P Srinivas Reddy, but he did not accompany them when they were brought to Shadnagar police station on November 29, 2021.
“It was a copy, paste mistake in the remand case diary, where it is mentioned that Srinivas Reddy had come to the police station along with the accused, and correct entries are made in part I of the case diary,” Surender told the commission. “The remand case diary was drafted during the night of November 29, 2019. I would have corrected the mistake before filing the report before the court.
But because of a mob agitating before the police station, I could not check the diary before filing in the court,” he said. When the commission asked him about the description of P Srinivas Reddy in the diary, he said, “All details are not recorded in the case diary and his reference in the case diary is due to a human error by my writer Shadat Ali, who prepared the document on my dictation. But I did not utter the name of Srinivas Reddy while dictating.”