The death of 22-year-old software engineer B. Deepthi under mysterious circumstances at her residence in Korutla town of Jagtial district on Tuesday turned out to be a murder for gain with the arrest of her younger sister Chandana and the latter’s boyfriend Umar Shaik Sultan.
Korutla police arrested the main accused, B. Chandana, 21, a B. Tech student of a Hyderabad-based private engineering college, and her boyfriend Umar of Hyderabad, and three others, including Umar’s mother, while they were heading to Maharashtra in a car with the stolen gold ornaments on Armoor-Balkonda road on Friday afternoon.
According to the police, Chandana had been in love with Umar, her senior in the engineering college in Hyderabad for the last two years. Police said that Chandana hatched a plot with her boyfriend to decamp with gold ornaments and cash from her house to Maharashtra to get married.
She executed the plan when her parents were in Hyderabad to attend a function at their relative’s house on the night August 28.
She allegedly made her sister Deepthi drink vodka on the intervening night of August 28 and 29 and called Umar to their house, as planned earlier. While Chandana and Umar opened the almirah to decamp with the gold ornaments, Deepthi, who was in deep slumber, suddenly woke up and raised an alarm after noticing Umar.
The duo allegedly tied a scarf around Deepthi’s neck and plastered her mouth with tape, resulting in her death, police added. They removed the tape before fleeing in a car to Hyderabad in the early hours of August 29.
Police recovered ₹1 lakh cash and 70 tolas of gold ornaments from the accused. Jagtial Superintendent of Police A. Bhaskar appreciated Korutla Circle Inspector Praveen Kumar and his team for tracking down the accused and recovering the booty by swiftly working on the CCTV footage and other clues.
