Hailing the High Court’s judgement on acquittal of Pidatala Satyam Babu in the Ayesha Meera murder case, the human rights and women’s organisations in the city, who staged a protest near the Gandhi Statue opposite the GVMC, demanded reopening of the case and handing over it to a CBI special team for fresh investigation, here on Sunday.
Talking to The Hindu , Lakshmi of POW (Progressive Organisation for Women) said: “On one hand gross injustice has been done to Satyam Babu, as he had lost eight years of prime life in the jail during the trial period and on the other, Ayesha’s killers are still roaming free.”
She said that from day one, Ayeshs’s family members, especially her mother, had been alleging that the main accused was Koneru Satish, grandson of the then minister, Koneru Ranga Rao, and not Satyam Babu. But so far the police and the investigating team did not bother to look seriously into this angle.
“In cases such as Ayesha and actor Pratyusha, where the culprits are friends and relatives of the people who are placed high in the political or bureaucratic system, the right judgment is never delivered. It was delivered promptly in Nirbhaya’s case, as all the accused were from the lower strata of society,” said Ms. Lakshmi.
Members from the HRF (Human Rights Forum) alleged that Ayesha’s murder case was a badly conducted investigation and it was botched up to save Koneru Satish. “All evidences have been tampered with or destroyed,” said HRF president M. Sarat.
Compensation sought
The HRF members demanded that Satyam Babu should be adequately compensated for loss of eight prime years and be given a job in a department in the government. “Apart from initiating a high-level impartial CBI probe into the case, criminal proceedings should be taken up against the police officers who conducted the investigation,” said Mr. Sarat.
Padma from Mahila Chetana said there was no corroboration between the scientific evidences, FSL reports, documentary and physical evidences but police framed an innocent person.
“Apart from initiating criminal proceedings against the investigating team, SC/ST Atrocities Act should be invoked against the officers, as Satyam Babu was a dalit,” she said.
“Today, Satyam Babu cannot walk and the authorities concerned say that he developed some degenerating disease in the jail. But we believe that it is due to torture, we need to examine this angle also,” said Ms. Padma.
