A former naxalite, Pushpalatha, 37, who was accused of involvement in many cases including killing of her second husband, was murdered at her rented house in Ramanthapur on Friday.
The woman living on the first-floor portion with her two children was preparing food when the assailants arrived there around noon. She had sent her children to a relative's house in Hayathnagar for Sankranti festival three days ago. Police are not sure about the number of killers but said the latter barged into the house.
“She apparently tried tor resist the killers. Some attackers gagged her mouth while others slashed her throat with a knife,” the Malkajgiri ACP, Radhakishan Rao, said. Nearly an hour before, she rang up her cousin Mahesh in Nanakramguda to pick her up to go to a hospital in Saroornagar.
He had called 20 minutes later to inform that he had started but to his shock, he found her lying at the main door in a pool of blood. Mahesh rushed her to a hospital but doctors declared she died by then. Hailing from Kandlapalli village of Vikarabad on city outskirts, Pushpalatha worked for the erstwhile People's War Group of naxalites as a member of its local squad in early 90s.
She married, Ramchander, also a PWG naxalite, who organised militant activities in Vikarabad area and led the squad. Ramchander was killed in an exchange of fire with the police in 1992 when the PWG squad abducted a person and was shifting him to an undisclosed location. Other members of the squad eventually surrendered or arrested.
Pushpalatha too was arrested from a hospital in Kachiguda two years later. On release from jail, she married a person, Ganesh, hailing from Potularam of Munugode in Nalgonda district. Mr. Radhakishan Rao said the woman, with the help of her brother, Ramesh Kumar, murdered Ganesh accusing him of developing relationship with her younger sister in 2008 in Osmania University police station area.
