By IANS
Hyderabad : Police in Andhra Pradesh’s Warangal district Wednesday gunned down three of the seven suspects in the sensational kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl.
The police claimed that the three were killed in a gun battle in Thatikayala village in Dharmasagar mandal, about 250 km from here. However, relatives of those killed alleged that they were killed in a fake encounter.
According to the police one of the suspects snatched the revolver of a cop when a police team had taken them to the scene of offence to collect evidences.
A police official said the suspect opened fire forcing the police to retaliate. Those killed were identified as T. Raju, the key accused, L. Ashok and B. Naresh.
Raju, who had a criminal record, along with six of his accomplices had Dec 10 allegedly kidnapped Manisha, daughter of M. Sadanandam, a real estate dealer and native of Mogilicherla village in the same district.
Since Raju and others were friends of Sadanandam, the girl did not suspect foul play when they picked her up from school, the police said. They demanded a ransom of Rs.2.5 million from her father, who did not inform the police and kept holding secret negotiations with the abductors.
The girl was taken to Thatikayala village Dec 13 and the abductors killed her because they feared they would be identified and caught by the police.
The police had arrested the suspects, but district Superintendent of Police Soumya Mishra produced the seven before media only on Tuesday.
She said Sadanandam lost his daughter because he had associated himself with Raju and his friends to help him over a petty rivalry. Later, Raju and his friends hatched a plan to extort money from Sadanandam by kidnapping his daughter.
Human rights activists and relatives of the three suspects have alleged that it was a stage-managed gun battle.
This is the second recent incident in Andhra Pradesh in which the police killed suspected kidnappers.
On Oct 20, police in Visakhapatnam had gunned down two suspects in similar circumstances, hours after they were arrested for kidnap and murder of a bank official.