By IANS
Hyderabad : Andhra Pradesh Police will subject three women to narcotic tests in an attempt to solve the mysterious rape and murder of their hostel mate in Vijayawada, an official said.
Kavitha, Preethi and Soumya, aged between 19 and 21, were staying in rooms adjacent to Ayesha Meeran’s room in a women’s hostel when the latter was raped and murdered on the night of Dec 27, 2007.
The Vijayawada police Friday filed a petition in the local court seeking permission for narcotic tests on the three girls along with Gurvinder Singh alias Laddu, who is the prime suspect in the case.
Police have already obtained written consent from hostel warden Padma, her husband Krishna and cook Siva Anjaneyulu to subject them to narcotic tests.
L. Vijaykumar, assistant commissioner of police (Vijayawada west), said the police suspect the girls were not revealing what they saw on the night of the crime and hence they approached the court seeking permission to conduct narcotic tests on them.
The girls told the police that they did not hear anything from Ayesha’s room on the night while the police feel that it was impossible given the fact that girl was raped, dragged from her bed to the bathroom and stabbed to death.
A letter dropped by the murderer near the body stated that the girl was raped and murdered for refusing to reciprocate his ‘love’.
Ayesha, a 19-year-old first year student of Bachelor of Pharmacy, was alone in her room at Sri Durga hostel at Ibrahimpatnam in Vijayawada.
Ayesha, who hails from Tenali town in Guntur district, had returned to the hostel the same day after celebrating Eid in her hometown.
How the intruder gained entry into the hostel in the dead of the night when it was locked from inside and how the other residents did not hear any sound remains a mystery for the police.
The case hit the headlines after the girl’s parents alleged that police were deliberately slowing down investigations because some influential people were involved in the case. The name of a relative of a state minister also cropped up during the investigations.
Despite the interrogation of more than 50 people and subjecting some of them to polygraph and DNA tests, the police have failed to crack the case.
According to the police, Laddu, who was arrested March 1 in Visakhapatnam, was a key suspect as he was also allegedly involved in the murder of two women, including a student in the same area in November last year.
The police have obtained permission from the court to question Laddu between March 10 and March 15. The police plan to conduct DNA and handwriting tests on him during the period.
The police have given clean chit to physician P. Nageswara Rao. The police had been criticized for not covering him under the probe as the hostel warden had made number of phone calls to him after the incident. Police officials said the warden had only called up the physician to inform him about the death of the girl.
The government last month announced a reward of half a million rupees for the person providing information leading to the arrest of the murderer and also promised to appoint him as sub-inspector, provided he met the minimum criteria.