This is a trying time for the couple. Last week, they laid to rest the mortal remains of their daughter, which were exhumed by investigators eight years ago, to find answers on her killing. On Friday, the 17-year-old was buried again, in the graveyard of a community mosque in a town in Andhra Pradesh, with the truth as elusive in one of the longest and most arduous probes in the history of Andhra Pradesh.
“She was a brilliant child, and was good at studies. She used to dance and sing well. We rue the day that we sent her off to college,” her mother told The Indian Express.
The 17-year-old’s sexual assault and murder on December 27, 2007, had shaken the then undivided Andhra Pradesh. Recently, the CBI filed a closure report citing the absence of evidence, witnesses, and culprits.
While filing the closure report in a Vijaywada court, CBI said that they found no evidence to take action against any individual in connection with the case and that there was no new material for further investigation.
However, the mother said they suspect several people had a hand in her murder, “including high-flying politicians”. When contacted, the CBI refused to comment, while the officers who headed the Police Special Investigation Team were unavailable to respond.
A police officer who was part of the SIT said that while their investigation “did not yield any result, they had hoped that the CBI’s would. That was not to be”.
A B. Pharmacy student at a college near Vijayawada, the 17-year-old was found killed two months after she had moved into a private hostel. According to two FIRs in the case — one by the Andhra Pradesh Police, which initially investigated it, and the other by the CBI — she was sleeping when she was struck on the head, then dragged into a bathroom, stripped and tied to a tap.
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That is how she was found by some hostel mates, and the warden and the warden’s husband.
According to the FIR, investigators also found words written with a ballpoint pen on her body — the letter ‘H’ and ‘Prema Chirutha’ [Love Cheetah]. Her clothes were found in the hallway leading to the bathroom.
The mother said the 17-year-old had moved into the private hostel because the college had no in-house accommodation, and said the hostel was recommended by the college management to them. She also recalls talking to her daughter hours before the attack from the hostel payphone.
“When we reached the spot on being told about what had happened, the hostel authorities and three of her hostel mates had washed the second floor. We were allowed to see her body only in the evening,” the mother said, adding that they saw it as a bid to destroy evidence.
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Over the next few months pressure mounted, as did allegations of involvement of the grandson of a minister in the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy-led Congress government. The Andhra Police questioned the grandson, but eventually let him off, drawing protests.
In 2008, the Andhra Police arrested Pidathala Satyam Babu, an alleged serial sexual offender, for the crime. According to the prosecution, Babu was “loafing” around the hostel premises when he caught a glimpse of the 17-year-old on the balcony. The police case was that Babu climbed up to the second floor, attacked the teenager, climbed down and fetched a chutney-pounding stone from outside a house nearby, and climbed back up again, hitting the 17-year-old with it. He then allegedly dragged her to the bathroom and sexually assaulted her.
The prosecution also claimed that Babu later went through her things and stole Rs 500 from her suitcase, and it was he who scribbled on her body as well as left an apology letter beside the body. Investigators also claimed to have found the murder weapon — the stone — and to have matched Babu’s handwriting to the letter and inscriptions on the body.
This, together with a DNA match, formed the crux of the evidence based on which a court in Vijayawada sentenced Babu to life imprisonment in 2010.
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The family disputes this version, alleging that police framed Babu “because they were under pressure to solve the case”. The mother accuses police of “botching DNA, fingerprint and footprint sampling”, and said they failed to question the three women who were present on the same floor as the 17-year-old when the murder took place.
The parents also believe that their daughter was not raped. “She was never raped, but a rape was staged to cover up the reason for the murder and people behind the murder,” the mother said.
In 2017, the Andhra Pradesh High Court overturned Babu’s conviction, citing lack of evidence. The defence had argued that his confession was coerced, and that he could not have climbed the building “because he was slightly built”. The defence also argued that the prosecution had contradicted itself by claiming that Babu knew the 17-year-old, while at the same time saying he had attacked her by chance.” Babu was released.
The teenager’s parents urged the court to transfer the case to the CBI. In 2018, the High Court did so, observing: “The truth, buried deep under the debris of faulty investigation and distortions, needs to be extricated and real culprits identified and punished.”
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The parents say that after they gave the CBI permission to exhume the body, they hoped for an end to their ordeal. “We didn’t want her body to be exhumed, but we allowed it so that her killers would be punished. But the CBI didn’t do us justice,” said the mother, holding back a sob.
On February 27, the CBI closed the case, prompting the family to demand a judicial probe. But as justice remains elusive, memories haunt them. Their younger daughter is studying in the US — a dream they had for the 17-year-old too, say the parents.
The only “win” they have had in all these years, adds the mother, is that they got back her mortal remains after a legal fight of five years. “We wanted our child to rest in peace.”
