HYDERABAD: Justice VS Sirpurkar, Chairman of the Judicial Commission, on Friday, asked the State counsel that the then ACP of Shadnagar, V Surender, the investigating officer (IO) in the rape and murder case of the veterinarian, had extracted the identity and other details of the accused from the owner of the lorry used by the accused on November 28, but didn’t send a police party to nab the accused till the next morning.
On the last day of the proceedings of the Commission, the three-member panel posed several questions to the State counsels pertaining to the arrest, age of the four accused persons and several other aspects from the time of the arrest till their death in the alleged encounter on December 6, 2019.
“After recording the statement of lorry owner P Srinivas Reddy, the IO allows him to go to the houses of the accused persons around 100 km away to check. When the police already knew details about the accused and their identity, why did (the police) not accompany him the same night and waited till the next morning to apprehend them,” the Commission members asked.
Justice Rekha P Sondurbaldota and Dr DR Kaarthikeyan also pointed out that it was a very serious case and the entire police force was on it. “Despite that the police picked up the accused only the next afternoon. So many loopholes in the story. Nobody including the investigating officer and the SHO Shadnagar who apprehended the accused spoke about this aspect,” they said.
‘No name on memo’
Further, Justice Sirpurkar observed that the IO had deputed SHO Shadnagar to apprehend the accused by issuing a memo, but the memo does not have the names of the persons to be arrested.In response, Umamaheshwar submitted, “The memo doesn’t have the names of the accused. But this has to be viewed in the light of the fact that a person was there to identify and lead the police to them.” Justice Sirpurkar commented, “What a mysterious circumstance? Srinivas Reddy gets to know the whole story, travels 100 km, meets all the accused, but the SHO goes only the next day.”