Jagtial police crack Deepti murder case, younger sister, her lover arrested

JAGTIAL: The suspicious death of 24-year-old software engineer B Deepti at her house in Korutla town, took a sensational turn with the Jagtial police revealing that Deepti was in fact done to death by her own younger sister B Chandana and her lover Umar Shaik Sultan.

Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Aggadi Bhaskar, the Superintendent of Police of Jagtial narrated the events that led to the gruesome murder of Deepti, who tried to stop her younger sister Chandana from running away from home, after stealing Rs 1.5 lakh and 70 tolas of gold ornaments.

The Korutla police received a complaint from Banka Srinivasa Reddy, father of Deepti, on August 29, 2023, that his elder daughter died under suspicious circumstances sometime after 10 pm on August 28 at their residence in Bheemuni Dibba of Korutla and his younger daughter Chandana was missing along with gold and cash.

The police immediately launched a massive search operation for Chandana by forming five teams, while the body of Deepti was sent to postmortem to find out the reasons for her death. Even as the forensic evidence confirmed death by force, police received an audio message from Chandana saying that she had no role in the death of her sister.

In the audio message sent to her brother, Chandana said that she in fact got her elder sister a bottle of Vodka that tragic night and left the home after Deepti passed out on the sofa in the drawing room.

“This way she tried to mislead the investigation, but we had enough evidence that Chandana was involved in the death of Deepti and continued our efforts to catch Chandana and Umar. We arrested them at a Dhaba on the Armoor-Balkonda road on Saturday morning while they were trying to escape to Mumbai,” the SP said.

According to the police, Chandana who was enrolled in the Malla Reddy Engineering College in Hyderabad, fell in love with Umar. They were both detained by the college. After that, Chandana returned home to Korutla. When she saw the gold ornaments and cash at home and came to know that her parents would be out of town to attend a marriage function on August 28th, she sent a message to Umar who lives in Hyderabad asking him to rush to Korutla.

After Deepti had passed out, Umar entered the home from the back door after parking his car. While Chandana and her lover were leaving the house along with the booty, Deepti woke up and tried to stop them.

“At this stage, they both used a scarf to shut her up and used another scarf to tie her down. While Deepti was still shouting loudly, they used tape to cover her mouth and nose, suffocating her to death. Around 5 a.m. on August 29, they left Korutla and reached Hyderabad. They took shelter at Umar’s house,” SP informed the media.

The police also arrested Syed Alia, mother of Umar, his sister Fatima and her friend Hafeez for their active role in encouraging the duo to steal cash and gold and escape to Mumbai to get married and settle there.