A decapitated head of an unidentified man was found at a place of worship in Telangana's Nalgonda district on Monday, January 10, police said. The incident happened under Chintapalli police station limits in the district and the priest, who noticed the head lying at the feet of a Mahankali idol in the religious place, informed the police. Police rushed to the spot and took up investigation after a case of murder was registered.
Eight special teams have been formed to identify the victim, police said, adding that the remaining part of the body has not been traced so far. The victim was aged between 25 and 35 years and he was killed at some other place and the head dumped, a senior police official told PTI. After images of his head were circulated on social media, a family from Suryapet identified the man.
The family arrived in Nalgonda and identified the victim as 30-year-old Ramavath Jaihind, Devarakonda DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) Anand Reddy told TNM. The man had left his home around four to five years ago, and had been residing in different places, he added. “So far, only the head has been found, remaining parts are yet to be traced,” the DSP said. No further clues have been found through CCTV footage so far, he said. The temple is located close to the highway connecting Hyderabad to Nagarjuna Sagar.
According to PTI, asked if the police suspected it to be a case of human sacrifice, a police official citing preliminary investigation ruled out such a possibility, saying the offence did not take place at the religious place. However, he said a detailed investigation from all angles was underway.
In another incident in 2019, three people were found brutally murdered inside a temple in Anantapur district of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. The three people, including the caretaker of the temple, his sister, and another woman from the village, Korthikota in Tanakal mandal, were found with their throats slit. Months later, police investigation revealed that they were allegedly killed while the accused were searching for a ‘hidden treasure’ of diamonds under the ‘shivalingam’ of the temple.
Back in 2018, in Hyderabad, the severed head of a baby girl was found on the terrace of a house. Police investigation found that a man and woman living in the house had allegedly killed the baby as a human sacrifice, as part of a black magic ritual, expecting it to cure the woman of an illness.
With PTI inputs