HYDERABAD: Even before the brutal murder of a woman, Apsara, by a temple priest, Sai Krishna, at Saroornagar in the city has faded away from public memory, the blood-soaked body of a 19-year-old woman was found in a pond in Vikarabad district.
The victim, identified as Sirisha, a nursing student at a private college in Vikarabad, was inflicted with multiple knife injuries. Her eyes were gouged out by the assailants using a screwdriver. The victim reportedly stopped her studies a couple of months ago after her mother fell ill.
Sirisha from Kadlapur village in Parigi mandal left home on Saturday without informing her parents who made a frantic search for her, but in vain. On Sunday, locals found clothes near the pond and when they got deeper into the water they saw the body. Police rushed to the spot and had the body retrieved from the pond. They found knife wounds on the head and hands of the victim.
The police shifted the body to the Vikarabad government hospital for autopsy and registered a case. They took Sirisha’s brother-in-law (her elder sister’s husband) Anil into custody on suspicion of his involvement in the gruesome murder.
Three police teams formed to crack the case are checking the call data of Sirisha to identify the killers. The absence of CCTV cameras near the pond may pose a challenge to the police to solve the case.
As per the preliminary investigation, Sirisha had left home after she was chided by her parents following a fight with her brother-in-law over her frequent phone calls to her friends. It’s learnt that Sirisha slept outside her house without the knowledge of her parents.