VIJAYAWADA: The police have more or less decided the line of argument to be presented before the High Court while seeking an appeal against its verdict acquitting P Satyam Babu of the charges of rape and murder of B Pharm student Ayesha Meera at her hostel in Ibrahimpatnam near here in 2007.
Ever since the High Court delivered the judgment, the city’s top cops have been holding a series of meetings to wriggle out of the accusation that they had deliberately bungled the investigation and made Satyam Babu a scapegoat to let the actual culprits off the hook.
As Director General of Police N Sambasiva Rao was abroad, senior police officials had a preliminary meeting with Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and explained to him that their investigation of the case was foolproof and that the actual culprit was Satyam Babu. They are of the view that if they lost the case it was because the prosecution could not argue effectively.
The Chief Minister is reported to have told police officials to be thorough in their argument, covering all aspects where the prosecution had let them down and be armed with evidence in support of their contentions in the grey areas that the court had pointed out.
As going in for appeal might hurt the sentiments of not only the minorities, but also SCs (Satyam Babu is an SC), the police should be doubly careful that their line of argument is in the right direction lest it would boomerang on the government ,the cops have been told.
According to sources, the police have prepared a note to be submitted to the DGP when he returns to Vijayawada on Tuesday explaining where the prosecution had gone wrong and how they could salvage the image of the police.
With the help of judgment of Mahila Court which convicted Satyam, the police are concentrating mainly on two issues - DNA evidence and Satyam’s ability to scale Ayesha’s hostel wall.
A police officer, on condition of anonymity said: “The Mahila Court judge had visited the scene of crime on the day of its occurrence and was confident that the culprit could gain entry into Ayesha’s room without much difficulty. A demo was organised in front of her, which cleared all doubts on whether it was a difficult feat.”
The police are sticking to their argument that Ayesha was murdered with chutney pounder. The defence argument that blood stains on walls and injuries on her face suggested Ayesha’s head was banged against the wall several times which led to blood spill out and smear on the wall was not convincing since the pattern of blood stain on the wall suggested that as Satyam Babu clobbered her to death with chutney pounder, blood spilled out in force and sprayed on wall.
As far as DNA evidence is concerned, police differ with the argument in the High Court order that the vaginal swabs were sent through a constable to an officer to be sent to the FSL.
The officials say that it is the regular practice and that it was never doubted. Further, FSL is an institution whose credibility is beyond reproach. There is no way vaginal swabs could be switched so that they would match with the DNA profile of Satyam Babu.
The police officials argue that had they wanted to frame someone and close the case, they would have done it with Laddu himself by switching the evidence in FSL.
“We have sent blood samples of 30 suspects for DNA profiling during the course of investigation and only when Satyam Babu’s sample was sent, it matched,” the official said.
Moreover one should understand that Satyam Babu was involved in eight such cases of which he may have been acquitted in five.
He was apprehended by Nandigama police and during the course of interrogation he spilled the beans that he was responsible for the rape and murder of Ayesha. He has history of committing offences in girls hostels, the officials say.