Nineteen hours after the attack on 21-year-old Madhavi and her husband, 23-year-old Sandeep, doctors at Yashoda Hospital said that Madhavi’s condition remains critical, and that her surgeries had been completed.
“The surgeries are done. Her bleeding has been controlled and parameters brought to normal. Now it depends on her response to recovery,” hospital officials said. “Given her age, we are confident she will recover."
"She is still critical, and it will take 48-72 hours to ascertain if she will live. There was a lot of bleeding," the hospital said.
Madhavi’s ear, jaw and neck were severely injured in the attack, and her hand was grievously injured as well. Yashoda Hospital said that they managed to straighten her arm, but will not be able to tell for a few days if it will recover. Their focus is to keep her alive, they added.
CCTV footage of the incident, which has since gone viral on social media, shows that the assailant, Madhavi’s father Manoharachari, first targeted his son-in-law with a sickle and when Sandeep fell to the ground, he attacked his daughter. Madhavi too collapsed and bled profusely even as she could be seen shouting for help.
The police said that Madhavi and Sandeep were in a relationship for the last five years and wanted to marry. Speaking to the media, Sandeep's family members claimed that Manoharachari wanted Madhavi to marry his sister's son, but she refused. Sandeep and Madhavi later married at Alwal in the city, about a week ago.
The girl's family refused to accept the marriage, but at the counselling conducted by the police they told authorities that they agreed to accept it. Manoharachari later conveyed to his daughter that he wanted to meet the couple at a location in SR Nagar and buy some clothes for them. When they reached there, he attacked them.
The incident came close on the heels of the killing of a Dalit youth by his father-in-law in Miryalaguda town of Telangana's Nalgonda district. Pranay Kumar was hacked to death when he was coming out of a hospital with his wife Amrutha Varshini, who is five months pregnant, on September 14.
Police have arrested seven accused, including the girl's father Maruthi Rao, who had struck a Rs1 crore deal for the contract killing.