The painstaking efforts of a brother to trace his sister, who went missing in 2004, has helped the Nalgonda police to unearth what is suspected to be a nearly three-year-old murder.
The Marriguda police on Saturday has excavated skeletal remains from an old well in the nearby Venkepalli village, about 50 km from Nalgonda. The police found cut hair, a pair of woman’s footwear and a cellphone.
The trigger for the police to take up the excavation all of a sudden was however, the petition of Upendra Chary, brother of the missing girl, on Friday. “My sister Priyanka’s husband Hanumanthu might have killed her and dumped in the well,” he had written in his complaint.
According to Upendra, he and his family moved to Hyderabad from Narketpally mandal in the district in 2004. The same year his sister Priyanka was abducted by one cab driver called Hanmanthu.
He saw her again only five years later, she was along with Hanumanthu and a boy child near LB Nagar in Hyderabad. She was also pregnant, he said. And their whereabouts remained a mystery after that. But this week, more than nine years after he last saw them, Upendra said he found Hanumanthu, his brother-in-law with another woman on Facebook, which led him to tracking him to Venkepalli village here.
Upendra claimed he learned from locals that Priyanka was killed by her husband who also stuffed her body in a sack and dumped it in the well.
According to police’s preliminary investigation Hanumanthu and Priyanka’s son was studying in Kondamallepalli mandal and efforts were on to trace the other child — a girl.
The identity of the skeletal remains, crime details and biological connection with the children would be confirmed only after employing forensic and DNA profiling, the police said. The accused Hanumanthu is in police custody for questioning, and investigation is underway.
