Early on Monday morning, three days before the horrific incident of the gangrape and murder of the Hyderabad veterinary doctor, Mohammed Ali alias Arif – one of the four accused of the crime – had run into trouble with the Road Transport Authority in Mahbubnagar town of Telangana. The officers found he was driving the lorry without a driving license since 2017 and the vehicle was overloaded with bricks that it used to transport between town in Karnataka and Hyderabad. But they did not confiscate the lorry because Arif after receiving telephonic instructions from the owner of the lorry, Srinivas Reddy, removed the motor cable thereby ensuring the vehicle would not start.
On the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, the same lorry was used by Arif and his fellow accused to transport the victim’s body from Thondapally toll plaza to Shadnagar where they burnt it.
It is indeed shocking that despite plying regularly on the inter-state route, Arif had managed to get past the officials for over two years, driving without a license. It is a damning commentary on the surveillance system in the two states.
That day, Arif had also instructed Naveen and Chenna Keshavulu to steal some iron rods that they sold for scrap for Rs 4000. That easy money was blown up to buy liquor. While they were consuming liquor at around 6 pm on 27 November, they spotted the doctor parking her two-wheeler. The men then plotted to trap her by deflating they tyre. When she returned after 9 pm, an inebriated Arif pretended to be a good samaritan, offering to help her with the vehicle. Shiva returned after a while, having filled air in the tyre.
According to the Cyberabad police remand report, they subsequently caught hold of her hands and legs, closed her mouth to prevent her shrieks from being heard and took her forcibly into the bushes besides the compound wall, besides which the lorry was parked. Naveen took away her mobile phone and switched it off while Chenna Keshavulu poured whisky into her mouth to prevent her from screaming. The beasts then took turns to rape her.
The victim started bleeding and fell unconscious. When she regained consciousness after a while, the four decided to get rid of her to destory any human evidence. Arif strangulated her till she breathed no more. They wrapped the body in a blanket and decided to burn it. Naveen and Shiva were asked to get petrol in a bottle. They burnt the body near a bridge in Shadnagar, some 27 km from the toll plaza. The sim card of the victim too was thrown into the fire. According to the police, this occurred around 2:30 am.
While Arif and Chenna then left in the lorry, Naveen and Shiva were asked to abandon the two-wheeler elsewhere. They parked the scooty near Kothur and boarded the lorry as well. Between 4 am and 7:30 am, the four men parked the lorry at Transport Auto Nagar and went their separate ways.
