Hyderabad
(Telengana), September 23: A commission appointed by the Supreme court to probe
veterinarian Disha’s rape and murder case pulled up the Station House Officer
of Shadnagar police station on various derelictions and discrepancies in the
case.
The missing
CCTV footage from police station, discrepancy about arrest in remand diary, and
addition of IPC sections were in focus during the hearing on Wednesday before
the SC-appointed commission probing alleged encounter killings of four accused
in veterinarian Disha’s rape and murder case. Shadnagar SHO A Sreedhar Kumar
was also grilled on Wednesday by the commission on some of the sequence of
events from arrest till the killings.
The police
officer told the commission that the CCTVs at the PS were working but he did
not think of preserving the footage. He said that on November 29, on the
instructions of ACP V Surender, he along with six cops and two drivers went to
Jaklair and Gudigandla villages to arrest the four suspects. He said that lorry
owner P Srinivas Reddy met them at Jaklair and assisted in rounding up the four
suspects.
When
commission’s lawyer K Parameshwar said the arrest claim ran counter to the
remand diary which showed that the four were brought to the station by the
lorry owner, the SHO claimed it was a typing error, insisting that he himself
presented the accused in front of the ACP at 5 pm on November 29. Quizzed on the
absence of an arrest memo/panchnama on the spot, the SHO claimed that due to
the presence of a mob, he could not execute the arrest memo.
The SHO
admitted that he had not mentioned the mob either in the case diary or in
his statement later recorded under CrPC section 161. The SHO came in the firing
line over the addition of various IPC sections too.
He said that
a case was registered under IPC sections 302 and 201 after Disha’s charred body
was found on November 28. Subsequently at 10.20 pm on November 29, IPC sections,
376-D, 120-B, 392, 366, 506, and 34 were added after recording the confessional
statements. When the commission pointed out that the said IPC sections were
already mentioned in other documents prior to the recording of confessional
statements, the SHO pleaded guilty admitting that it was a mistake.