The mystery behind the disappearance of a girl was unravelled on Wednesday when the Saroornagar police caught a maid who had allegedly abducted and murdered the child to steal her two gold earrings weighing 1.5 gram.
Along with the maid, Laxmi, 32, her husband, Raju, accused of abetting her and screening the evidence, too was arrested. Four-year-old G. Ramya Sree, was loitering near her house at Katikonikunta in Champapet of Saroornagar on June 1 when she went to the neighbouring house of Laxmi.
“The maid-mother of three children- set eyes on the tiny tot's gold earrings and called her inside. She gagged the unsuspecting girl and took her to old city in an auto-rickshaw,” the Saroornagar Inspector, A.V.R. Narasimha Rao, said. The woman strangled the child to death with a nylon rope near a graveyard in Mohammednagar of Bhavaninagar and collected the earrings. Later, she dumped the body in a nala and returned home. The girl's parents approached the police in the night after searching the area for the child. Two days later, the police brought the maid to police station for questioning when the girl's father, G. Suresh Kumar, a mechanic, raised suspicions over her possible complicity. Laxmi, however, claimed she was innocent. Her husband, Raju, who returned from Nellore, too was summoned to the station. “While feigning innocence with us, she revealed to her husband that she had eliminated the girl, asking him to sell the earrings which she hid in the house,” the police said. Raju hatched a plan to mislead the police. He went to Bhavaninagar area and made a telephone call to the girl's father. Claiming as well-wisher, he told Kumar that he saw the girl in Bhavaninagar area.
As the call was traced to a public telephone booth, investigators grilled its owner about the facial features of the caller which matched with that of Raju. The telephone booth owner confirmed that the caller was Raju when the police took the latter to him.
During interrogation, Raju spilled the beans about his wife's involvement. Based on Laxmi's confession, the police retrieved the decomposed body of the girl from the nala. Relatives and family members of the girl staged a demonstration before the police station demanding serious action against the accused couple. Traffic was held up on the Dilsukhnagar main road for over an hour due to the agitation.
