Rachakonda police Commissioner G. Sudheer Babu, scientific experts and police officials along with the arrested accused Putta Guru Murthy at a press conference in Hyderabad on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit: Handout
Skin tissue, hair strands in a bucket, and traces of blood in the house thoroughly cleaned with phenyl revealed a gory murder, which was earlier being probed as a missing person case.
Putta Guru Murthy, 39, father of two children aged 7 and 10, spent about eight hours dismembering his wife’s body before destroying the body parts on a gas stove at their residence in New Venkateswara Colony, Jillelaguda on January 16 (Thursday), Rachakonda Police Commissioner G. Sudheer Babu told the media here on Tuesday.
The accused then crushed the bones and flushed them off in the toilet along with small pieces of flesh, while the remnants were stored in a trash bin to be disposed in the lake later, the Police Commissioner explained.
Mr. Murthy, who served as a jawan in the Indian Army for about 15 years before joining as a security guard with the DRDO in Kanchanbagh, was arrested by the Meerpet police after forensic and scientific evidence validated his confession. “Mr. Murthy and his 35-year-old wife Venkata Madhavi had been married for 13 years. Following his confession to the police and a relative and collection of scientific and forensic evidence, we reconstructed the crime scene and found him to be guilty of the crime,” explained the Commissioner. Scientific experts from Delhi and Gujarat, Clues Teams, Luminary Forensics experts alongside Telangana Forensics Science Laboratory scientists together analysed the residence where the murder took place.
The murder plot
Elaborating on the sequence of events, the Police Commissioner said that on January 14, Mr. Murthy took his wife and children to his sister Sujatha’s residence to celebrate Sankranti. The couple left their children with their aunt and went back home for the night. The next day (January 15), the couple went to his sister’s place and returned home, without their children, around 10.30 p.m.
“Around 8 a.m. on January 16, Mr. Murthy woke up and initiated an argument with his wife and with an intention to kill her, he hit her and later strangled her,” said the officer. Mr. Murthy spent the entire day in the cover up, when neighbours questioned about the foul smell, he evaded claiming that the house was not clean.
When his children returned home the next day and looked for their mother, Mr. Murthy calmed them by saying she had gone out. The situation peaked when the accused accompanied his in-laws to lodge a missing person complaint about his wife and continued to support the police in the investigation for the following days before revealing the truth.
“Mr. Murthy was an aggressive man with cases under the Section 498 (dowry harassment) and domestic violence lodged against him the past. The couple was also counselled by the village elders following disputes. During the interrogation, he showed no remorse,” Rachakonda Police Commissioner added.
Searches in the Jillelaguda lake, where the accused claimed to have disposed her body parts have not yielded any results yet. The police said they will seek his custody for questioning to get a clear picture of his motive and plan.
Published – January 28, 2025 09:12 PM is
