HYDERABAD: Bihar-born hitman Subhash Kumar Sharma, who was awarded the death penalty in the Nalgonda honour killing of Dalit youth Perumalla Pranay Kumar in Miryalaguda in Sept 2018, stayed in a Hyderabad hotel for 57 days before travelling to Nalgonda to commit the crime.
The court found that after Sharma arrived in Hyderabad, one of the convicts, Abdul Bari, got him a room at a hotel in Malakpet, where he stayed for 57 days. Bari also gave Subhash a mobile phone. From there, Subhash was shifted to another hotel in Narketpally, Nalgonda, and then to another hotel in Nalgonda town, where he produced his voter ID card as proof of identity.
The key accused in the murder, Pranay’s father-in-law Thirunagaru Maruthi Rao, began contacting other accused in the case as early as Jan 2018. He continued to have regular conversations with them until Pranay’s murder in September 2018.
According to CCTV footage outside the hospital, Sharma was seen following Pranay, his pregnant wife Amrutha Varshini and his mother Premalatha as they left the hospital premises with the machete in his hand, and later attacked Pranay while his wife and mother screamed for help on Sept 14, 2018.
Except for Maruthi Rao and his brother Sravan, all others involved in the crime used fake SIM cards. However, forensic evidence extracted their conversations and matched the voice in the conversations to the voice samples of the accused.
