Techie murder case: Father recognised girl’s body after identifying ring on her finger

Offering to drop her off at her hostel, Sanap, had abducted the software engineer from LTT.

The father of Hyderabad-based techie who was allegedly raped and murdered in the city in January 2014, told the court on Tuesday that he recognised his daughter’s body after he identified the ring on her finger. The police claimed that on January 5, from 5.30 am to 6.30 am at the Eastern Express Highway, near Mumbai Thane Service Road, the accused Chandrabhan Sanap dragged the victim behind the bushes and murdered her.

Offering to drop her off at her hostel, Sanap, according to the police, had abducted the software engineer from Lokmanya Tilak Terminal (LTT), took her on his bike and rode to a lonely place, raped her and then tried to burn her body.

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“We went searching for her body on the Express Highway along with a relative. On January 16, 2014 we found the body near the Highway in the bushes. The condition of the body was beyond recognition. I found a finger ring on her finger and I recognised the body and the body was my daughter’s,” the father told the court.

The 60-year-old flew in from their hometown in Machhilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, early Tuesday morning to depose in court. Arraigned as a witness in the case, the techie’s father told the court that his daughter would never talk to strangers. “My daughter was not open minded. She had limited number of friends. She was very possessive and therefore she never used to talk with strangers,” the father testified during his cross examination.

The father was also shown two video footages taken at the station on platform four and five at LTT, where he identified his daughter and her belongings in the two separate videos. “I saw my daughter entering the platform along with a trolly bag and a sack on her back. In this video, my daughter was holding a mobile and one man was driving her trolley bag,” the witness said.

Identifying the articles shown to him in court, the father claimed that the yellow metal ring, a watch, a black trolley, a mobile phone and a scarf belonged to his daughter and that she was wearing them when she left the house. The father also identified the fresh clothes that were retrieved from the trolley bag which the techie was carrying.

Briefing the court about his ordeal to find his daughter, the father told the court that whenever his daughter got leave from work she would come home to Machhilipatnam. “On December 12, 2013 she came home and she stayed till January 4, 2014. I took her to Vijaywada, which was the nearest railway station to Machhilipatnam at 5 am on January 4, 2014. The next day, she was to reach Mumbai.

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In the train she contacted me at about 9 pm and told me that she was at Solapur. After reaching Mumbai, she did not contact me. I tried to contact her but nobody responded. Thereafter, I contacted the hostel and they said she had not turned up,” the father deposed. The father told Newsline that coming to Mumbai reminded him of the incident.

meghna.yelluru@expressindia.com

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