“Please keep talking to me, I am scared,” were the last words a 26-year-old woman told her sister when she was returning home after 9 pm and found out she had a flat tyre. Early next morning, her charred body was found on the outskirts of Hyderabad, at an underpass in Chatanpally village. The police have detained two suspects in connection with the murder and taken them into custody.
The woman, who made a call to her sister at 9.22 pm, spoke for 6 minutes — asking her to stay on the line.
“I just got done with work. Please talk for a while. I'll tell you the reason later. I told you about the usual place where I park my bike, right? But when I was trying to park the vehicle there today, the toll plaza guy told me that police are towing illegally parked vehicles. So I parked the vehicle at the other end of the toll plaza. After returning, I found that the vehicle had a flat tyre,” the woman told her sister.
To this, her sister told her to leave the bike at the spot and take it to the mechanic in the morning.
However, the woman can then be heard saying that she’s scared, and that some people in a lorry nearby insisted on helping and refused to let her leave.
“Listen to me, there's a lorry here and people are in it. And one person from it offered to help and said that he would get the bike fixed. He took the bike and returned saying that the shops were closed. Again, he said that he would take it somewhere. I am scared. There are vehicles around. When I told them that I will leave, they insisted that I don't. They said what if the vehicle stopped in between. I am scared. They are all waiting outside,” the woman says.
She then elucidates her interaction with the drivers of the lorry. The woman can be heard saying: “When I started the bike, they said, ‘Madam, your tyre is punctured’. When I told them that I will ride the bike till the bus stop and get it fixed there, a lorry driver insisted that he would get it fixed. He sent a small boy to get the vehicle repaired. But the boy returned saying that the shops were closed. Then he said that there's some other shop. But when I said that I will leave, he said what if the bike stops somewhere in between?”
To this, her sister asks her to go wait near the toll gate nearby. "So that everyone stares at me?" the woman says. Her sister interrupts, "So what?"
The woman reiterates that she’s scared, and doesn’t know what to do.
"I am very scared of them. I feel like crying. I don't feel like standing here. You please keep talking until my bike comes back. They (lorry drivers) are all waiting outside. You please keep talking to me, I am scared,” she says.
According to her sister, the woman then immediately called back and spoke for less than a minute. However, when her sister called her back 20 minutes later, the woman didn’t answer her phone.
When the woman didn’t return home even after 10 pm, the family decided to go look for her.
In an interview to 10TV, the woman’s sister said, “We went and looked for her in the entire area. We asked the people who were there near the parking area, but they didn’t know.”
When they made no progress, the family filed a complaint with the police. In just a few hours, the missing woman's body was found.
The police suspect that the vehicle was deliberately punctured by the culprits to trap the victim. In an interview, the sister said she suspected the same.
“When she called me and spoke to me, I didn’t take it that seriously. I didn’t expect that it would be this kind of situation. When she told me that she was scared, I thought it was because it was night and it was late, and she was scared because the bike was punctured,” her sister said.
“The culprit must be punished. Rules must be brought in so that this doesn’t happen again,” she added.