The Hindu : A gory deed, verily

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 05, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

A gory deed, verily

By K. Srinivas

One would have expected the woman to remain defiant and take the questions in her stride. After all, she was being accused of drugging a man to death and later chopping his body into pieces. But she was not.

She was most taciturn, while the media was aggressive. It was as if the media wanted her confession repeated, as the flashguns popped ceaselessly and video cameras whirred.

Sailaja perhaps needs no introduction, as she has been the subject of intense media speculation after the dismembered body of a man was found in her apartment six days ago.

After repeated grilling and checking and cross checking her confession, the West Zone police concluded that she alone was responsible for the murder of Prabhakar and also for the gruesome act of chopping the body into several pieces, obviously in the hope of discarding them, so that there was no trace of the 47-year-old man.

Prabhakar went missing on June 25. He left home on his Kinetic Nova carrying Rs. 2 lakhs in cash. It was a case of man missing.

The only thing police could do was to get the records of his Reliance mobile phone where they noticed 18 calls were received from a particular landline on the day he went missing.

When the police located the house from where the calls originated, they could not imagine that they were to stumble the most grotesque scene.

As police tried to cull out information from Sailaja, they literally smelt a rat.

The stench of death hung in the house and a cursory inspection of the apartment yielded the mutilated parts of the body... that of Prabhakar. When grilled about the body parts, Sailaja initially maintained that one of her acquaintances, Ranjith Kumar, of Habsiguda killed him, cut the body into parts.

No amount of questioning could get a different version from Sailaja.

But when Ranjith Kumar was ultimately traced, he had perfect alibis for his being away in Vijayawada on the day of murder. Police learnt that he had given Rs. 1 lakh to Sailaja for getting his brother a job abroad. When the promised job was provided, he began demanding repayment and that she paid him the money. Police crosschecked his version and found corroborative evidences calling Sailaja's bluff.

The mystery deepened further and the police grilled Sailaja again. Then came the confession. She was in dire need of money as her husband planned to go abroad after paying Rs. 2 lakhs to another woman.

As he could not get his visa, she allegedly forced him to live incognito and Sailaja began borrowing money on heavy interest rates. As Ranjit was pestering for repayments, she tried to borrow Rs. 2 lakh from Prabhakar, whom she befriended earlier.

Going by the confessional records, Prabhakar gave her Rs. 1.40 lakhs on June 25 and, in return, demanded that she satiate his carnal desires. Sailaja claims to have rejected the amorous overtures and later gave him a soft drink mixed with nail polish remover. Prabhakar, she claims, fell unconscious and that three days later she realised that he died.

She then decided to get rid of the body. She got his scooter parked at a different place by requesting another person and later bought a knife. What puzzled the police was that she alone managed to chop the body into several pieces on her own.

Police went on interrogating her to know whether anyone had assisted her. But they had to believe her as she steadfastly maintained that she alone did the job.

Police recovered the victim's gold ornaments, clothes, three knives and a shoe in pursuance of her confession and remanded her to judicial custody on Friday.

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