HYDERABAD: A retired Army jawan employed as a security guard in a defence establishment allegedly killed his wife on Jan 15 and tried to cover up the crime by chopping the body into pieces, boiling them in a pressure cooker and using a pestle to grind the bones before dumping the remains in a lake.
Victim Puttavenkata Madhavi (35) was reported missing on Jan 18 after her family questioned suspect Gurumurthy about her whereabouts. Madhavi’s parents lodged a missing complaint at Meerpet police station . He claimed she left home in a huff following an argument with him over visiting a relative’s house a couple of days earlier.
Gurumurthy was taken for questioning to Meerpet police station, where he allegedly confessed to the murder in a fit of rage.
To wipe out the evidence, he chopped her body in their bathroom, boiled the parts in a cooker on a stove used in eateries, then separated the bones, ground them using a pestle and boiled them again, police sources said. After cooking the flesh and bones for three days, he packed them in a bag and dumped it all in a nearby lake.
Till late Wednesday, police hadn’t traced the victim’s remains in the lake at Meerpet into which Gurumurthy claims to have thrown a bag filled with crushed body parts. Clues teams and a dog squad has been deployed for a more extensive search, a police officer said.
Gurumurthy married Madhavi about 13 years ago and the family lives in Hyderabad’s Jillelaguda. The couple’s two children were visiting the suspect’s sister on the day of the alleged crime.
Later, he fabricated the missing drama and informed her parents, a cop said
Police said the case will be altered to murder in a couple of days and Gurumurthy will be arrested.
Meerpet SHO K Nagaraju said police were still probing it as a “missing person case” since no evidence had been found of the suspected murder.
