VIJAYAWADA: The family of 33-year-old Ganguri Srinath, a native of Guntur who died under suspicious circumstances in the United States in 2023, has raised concerns over slow progress of the case investigation.
They allege that higher officials of the Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department (APCID) have instructed the investigating officer to file a closure report due to a lack of evidence.
Srinath’s father, Ganguri Babu Rao, has demanded a thorough probe, suspecting the involvement of Srinath’s wife, Sai Charani, her father Sukhavasi Srinivasa Rao, and his wife Rajasri in the case.
The Mangalagiri CID police registered a case under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in December 2023 after receiving Babu Rao’s complaint.
The case was filed after seeking legal opinion and communicating with Virginia Way police in the US for details related to the incident.
According to Babu Rao, Srinath married Sai Charani in 2016 and took her to the US in January 2017 on a dependent visa.
He was employed at DaVita Company in Virginia Way. A few months after moving, Charani allegedly confessed that she had been forced into the marriage by her parents and issued multiple threats, stating she would kill him and marry someone else.
When Srinath informed her parents, they assured him they would resolve the issue, Babu Rao claimed.
On October 16, 2022, while trekking at Yono Hills in Atlanta, Charani allegedly pushed Srinath into a gorge and later portrayed his death as an accident, Babu Rao alleged.
Shockingly, she neither informed Srinath’s family nor lodged a complaint with local authorities.
A postmortem was conducted four months later, and the US authorities ruled the death an accident.
Babu Rao lamented that despite filing the case in 2023, CID officials have neither questioned Charani nor her parents. He further alleged that political pressure was being used to close the case.
Demanding justice, he urged authorities to continue the investigation and ensure those responsible are punished.