Writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his book ‘A Study in Scarlet’ of the legendary fiction series Sherlock Holmes has said ‘there is nothing like first-hand evidence’. Through out the series, Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective, has believed in gathering the first-hand evidence from a crime scene that proves to be the vital clue in cracking the case.
It appears the City Police had taken a leaf out of the Sherlock’s book while probing into the murder mystery of a 32-year-old woman whose charred body was found at a secluded layout abutting the road between Kothapalem to Narava in the wee hours of May 4. And the first-hand evidence gathered from the scene of crime led the police to zero in on the perpetrator—the live-in partner of the victim.
The murder hogged the limelight for it was probably one of the most intriguing cases that the police had solved in the recent times—a brutal murder with all ingredients of a crime potboiler.
As per the the investigators, they remained clueless for quite a few days as every lead ended in a blind alley. But, the first-hand evidence helped them reconstruct the scene brick-by-brick to nab the killer.
“The body was charred beyond recognition and it took us 10 days to confirm the identity of the victim. We even tried to get the forensic bio-metric to link up with the Aadhaar details, but no luck. Nobody came forward to claim the body which made things even more difficult,” says DCP (Zone-II) T. Ravi Kumar Murthy.
Evidence gathered
The cops had only two first-hand evidence to lay their hands on—a grainy footage gathered from the CCTV installed at a school nearby the scene of crime and the silver anklets recovered from the partly charred body.
The footage showed a bike coming to the secluded layout at around 2.15 a.m. and something was being dumped followed by a fire at around 2.48 a.m.
Probe picks pace
The police sent the footage to the FSL, Hyderabad. “The FSL experts did their best to improve the quality of the footage. After examining them under magnifying lens, we were certain that the victim was known to the killer as they had walked freely to the crime scene,” says ACP (North) L. Arjun.
But, the silver anklets provided the police the vital clues. Basing on the logos and design etched on the anklets, the police found the jewellery store and the date of purchase.
“Scanning through the records based on design and weight of the anklets, the police short-listed around 300 buyers and approached each buyer from the address and phone numbers mentioned in the duplicate bill copies.
A few were very hostile to us and even questioned our intentions,” says a police officer associated with the investigation.
After questioning around 260 buyers, the police found a match to the CCTV footage and the bike at the scene of crime which led to the arrest of Satish, a photographer and the victim’s live-in partner.
“Satish strangled the woman to death with a nylon rope before setting her body on fire. Satish killed the woman as she did not approve of him marrying another girl,” says DCP Ravi Kumar Murthy.
Sumit Bhattacharjee
