A 20-year-old man attacked an engineering student, whom he had been stalking for the past few months, with a sickle on her college premises at Chandrayanagutta on Monday before ending his life by consuming poison.
The attack on the student M. Ravali, 19, in daylight as she was walking into the college after alighting from a bus and the subsequent suicide of the ‘attacker’ Ch. Pradeep, 20, created panic among students of Aurora Scientific Technological and Research Academy in Bandlaguda.
Ravali came to the college in a private bus at around 9 am along with other students. Pradeep entered the Academy premises posing as a student in college uniform and was waiting for her in one corner. As Ravali was walking towards her class, Pradeep came from behind and attacked her with a sickle, inflicting serious injuries, Chandrayanagutta Inspector N. Rama Rao said.
As Ravali collapsed to the ground, other students tried to nab the attacker. Pradeep who was carrying some poison with him immediately swallowed it. College officials shifted both of them to a hospital where Pradeep died while undergoing treatment.
A resident of Ramnagar, Ravali had joined the Academy just three weeks ago and was doing her first year engineering course. “Pradeep had been pestering her with love proposals for quite some time. Earlier, his family used to live in Ramnagar next to Ravali’s house,” the Inspector said. After Ravali’s parents complained about his alleged harassment, the latter’s family shifted to Guntur two years ago.
However, Pradeep returned to the city and was pursuing a course in the Central Institute of Tool Design at Balanagar and was staying with a relative. According to the Inspector, Pradeep was upset over Ravali rejecting his proposal.
As his ‘harassment’ became unbearable, she had even lodged a complaint with the Musheerabad police, who registered a case of attempt to outrage the modesty of a woman against him. “We had sent a team to his house in Guntur to nab him. On learning this, he had attempted suicide by jumping into Nagarjunasagar,” Chikkadpally ACP Amarkanth Reddy said.
