12 years after rape and murder of Andhra pharmacy student which caused massive outrage, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is re-investigating the case is conducting a re-postmortem of the body in Tenali.
The 19-year-old pharmacy student was allegedly raped and killed in the outskirts of Vijayawada. Her body found in the hostel bathroom with multiple stab injuries on December 27, 2007.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) which was probing the case had told the Hyderabad High Court that the case records had been destroyed in the trial court in November 2018. This was an allegation of the victim’s parents as well.
The High Court took serious note of the victim’s parents’ allegations regarding “destruction of evidence material" at a Vijaywada trial court even as the appeal against the trial court’s verdict convicting Satyam Babu of the crime was being heard in the High Court.
The High Court ordered the CBI to begin fresh investigation. Following this direction, earlier this year in July, the CBI sought the HC’s permission to exhume the victim’s body to conduct re-postmortem after taking consent from her parents.
With CBI exhuming and re-conducting the postmortem of the victim’s body, the case has shot into limelight again. According to sources, CBI officials had told the High Court in July that they were missing of certain details pertaining to the injuries on victim's body in the from the past post-mortem.
Advocate Srinivas Rao, who has been handling the case for several years on behalf of the victim's parents, told TNM, "When CBI officials approached the HC seeking permission to exhume and re-postmortem the body, they said that the injuries on the other parts of her body, aside from those on her forehead and marks that suggested a scuffle, were not mentioned in the original post-mortem. They had examined photographs, videos and other documents pertaining to the case before seeking permission."
“The family is hoping that this would help to bring the culprits to justice," the advocate added.
Background
Following the incident, the police in 2008 said that Satyam Babu, who had been arrested in a cell phone robbery, allegedly confessed to the pharmacy student’s murder.
But Ayesha’s parents had alleged that Satyam Babu was merely a misdirection in the investigation, and it was a relative of the former Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Koneru Sateesh -- Koneru Ranga Rao -- who was allegedly involved in the crime.
Though Satyam Babu was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 by the Mahila Court in Vijayawada, the Hyderabad HC acquitted Satyam Babu in 2017.