Hyderabad: The Uppal police of Rachakonda have solved the mystery of the sensational beheading of a three-month-old girl-child in Chilukanagar under Uppal police limits with the house-owner Kerukonda Rajasekhar confessing to his crime of performing human sacrifice to heal the prolonged illness of his wife Srilatha. The police have arrested six accused, including the couple.
According to the police, Uppal PS patrol party responded to a Dial-100 call on February 1 and rushed to the residence of Kerukonda Rajashekar in Chilkanagar and found a severed head of a few months old girl child on the terrace of the house. The police registered a case under Sections 302 and 201 IPC on a complaint from Kerukonda Rajashekar and took up the investigation.
The police analyzed CDRs of 122 Mobile phones and 54 cell tower dumps of various service providers and compared with the suspected CDR entries. In this case, 40 witnesses were examined and 45 suspects were questioned. The police verified over 100 CC Camera footages.
During the investigation, the police came to know that Kerukonda Rajashekar became superstitious with his wife Srilatha ailing for four years. The cops learnt Rajashaker and his wife visited Sammakka-Saralamma temple at Medaram two years ago where a “Koya” advised the couple to perform sacrifice of a girl-child to get rid of the evil spirits through black magic. Accordingly, Rajashekar consulted three Black Magicians — Syed Sha Mohamood Khaizar Pasha, a housewife T. Srilatha and her sister Saritha of Boduppal and Mallarapu Laxminarayana Goud of Chiryala village under Keesara Mandal of Medchal district.
As the couple’s efforts yielded no results, Rajashekar and his wife decided to go for ‘Narabali’ and Rajasekhar went round the city in search of an abandoned girl-child. In this process, the accused found an infant aged around three to six months at Boyaguda on the road on January 31 night. Around midnight of February 1, Rajashekar left for Boyaguda in his car with a knife and a polythene bag and reached Boyaguda at 1.30 am and kidnapped the already identified girl-child from the roadside. He proceeded to the river Moosi at Prathap Singaram and beheaded the infant at 2 am and threw the torso and knife into the river. Later, he put the severed head in a polythene bag and reached home around 3 am.
After returning home, Rajeshekar and his wife performed Black Magic with the severed head of the infant. After the Pooja, Rajashekar carried the severed head to the terrace and kept it in the south-west corner under moonlight. Later, the accused left for work as usual in his cab for Madhapur in order to avoid any suspicion. On the way, he threw the polythene bag with torso in a GHMC garbage bin at Nacharam. Meanwhile, Verakonda Bala Laxmi, mother-in-law of the accused saw the severed head around 11 am and raised hue and cry. A neighbour Nagaraju went there and called ‘Dial-100’.
The severed head was shifted to Gandhi Hospital where a post-mortem was conducted on February 2. Dr Vasanth Naik opined that the injury was anti-mortem and time of death was between 24 hours to 48 hours before the examination. Blood samples of the body and fluid samples were collected by the police from the terrace of the house of Rajashekar. On February 14, FSL confirmed that the blood samples collected from the terrace and living room of the house were of the same biological origin.
On the basis of the FSL report, the police confronted Rajasekhar on February 15. The accused blurted the truth that he had committed the crime along with his wife. Srilatha also confessed to have encouraged and assisted her husband in the crime. The police arrested both and seized incriminating material from their house.
The grisly murder of the girl child was detected under the supervision of Mahesh M Bhagwat, Commissioner, Dr Tarun Joshi, Joint Commissioner, Ch. R. Umamaheswara Sarma, DCP Malkajgiri Zone, Syed Rafeeq, Addl. DCP SOT, G. Sundeep, ACP, Malkajgiri Division, by P. Venkateshwarlu, Inspector of Uppal, G. Naveen kumar, SOT Inspector of Malkajgiri Zone, K. Jagannath Reddy, Inspector of Medipally and staff of Uppal PS. (NSS)