Hyderabad: After 10 years of rape and murder of a minor girl, the Rangareddy district court sentenced the accused to life imprisonment on Tuesday.
The victim was 16 years old at the time of the incident. This was reported to the Vanasthalipuram police in January 2014. DNA samples corroborated the accused’s confession during the trial.
In the first week of January, the Vanasthalipuram police received a missing case filed by the deceased’s mother in the name of two suspects. But the investigation was stopped when the then Inspector Gopalkrishna Murthy was transferred.
However, in the third week of March, after the mother mentioned the name of 33-year-old D Venkatesh, the police intensified the investigation. He was arrested from Mogilicherla village in Prakasam district. The accused has admitted that he raped and strangled a 16-year-old girl in the name of marriage. He was arrested and produced in court.
In his interrogation, the girl was staying with Koteswaramma, the aunt and the accused had introduced Koteswaramma to the victim in the name of paying interest.
He then started getting close to her and forcing her to have sex. The deceased asked his parents to tell him about his relationship, but he refused saying that he was married and had children. But the minor’s constant questions about marriage annoyed him and he decided to remove her.
On the pretext of marrying her, he told her to run away with money and gold and both of them went to a rented room in Maheswaram.
The accused took the girl to a secluded place of Mankinda Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple at Mogilicherla in Prakasam district and strangled her to death after promising to marry her in his own village.