On October 15, the Hindupur Railway Police found two bodies on the train tracks near Kotapi village. It was difficult to identify the man and the woman, and the police registered a case of unnatural death and transferred it to the Hindupur Rural police station. It looked like a suicide – but the investigators felt there was something fishy about the scene. They decided to wait for the post mortem – which proved that both of them had been strangled to death before their bodies were run over on the railway track.
The deceased were identified as Geetha Bai and Nagabushanam Rao, residents of Ahmedabadnagar of Hindupur town. And weeks after the incident, the police say they have cracked the case. A woman named Susheelamma, and four men including her partner and two brothers, have been arrested for the murder.
And according to the police, one of the most important clues to solving the case was a silk thread in an auto-rickshaw.
The motive
M Susheelamma was until recently living in a house rented out by the victims, Geetha Bai and Nagabushanam Rao – a couple. A tailor by profession, Susheelamma had taken a loan of Rs 4 lakh from her house owners some time back, promising to pay them back as and when she gets work and money.
According to the police, as the couple started demanding their money back, there were several minor altercations between them and Susheelamma. At one point, Susheelamma had to vacate the house, and shift to a different locality.
As the couple continued to mount pressure on Susheelamma to return the money, there was a scene near her new residence. Feeling insulted, Susheelamma along with her partner Tadi Nagabuhshan and her brothers Pavan Kumar and Anjaneyulu, decided to kill the couple and make their deaths look like a suicide, says Penugonda DySP S Mahboob Basha who supervised the investigation.
The murders
On the day of the murders, Susheelamma and her group convinced Geetha Bai and Nagabushanam Rao to come to a nearby village on the pretext of paying off the loan. They arranged an autorickshaw to bring the couple there.
“As the auto reached an isolated place, they stopped the vehicle, pushed the couple into the bushes, and strangled them to death,” DySP Mahaboob Basha says.
The accused then ferried the bodies in the same auto to the railway tracks near Kotapi village.
The investigation
Once the post mortem found that this was a case of murder, DySP Mahaboob Basha and his team of Inspectors Srinivasulu, Darani Kishor and Balamaddileti, and many SI's, started their probe from the victims’ residence.
The police found out that the couple had gotten into an auto, and then tracked down the auto driver.
“While searching his vehicle, we found a fancy zari thread – the kind used in tailoring,” the DySP reveals. The auto driver turned out to be the younger brother of Susheelamma – a tailor.
Meanwhile, the police verified the victims’ call records as well, and once they started questioning Susheelamma and the others, they confessed to the crime. “All of them have been sent to judicial remand,” the officer says.
