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A woman sub-inspector and three women constables of the Andhra Pradesh police have been held guilty by an inquiry commission of the custodial killing of a woman in Vijayawada three years ago.
The report of the commission headed by Justice V V Ranga Raju was tabled in the state legislative assembly on Thursday.
The panel was appointed after a public outcry over the custodial death of Kona Krishna Kumari in Vijayawada's all-woman police station on May 6, 1999, after she had been picked up in a kidnapping case.
The commission has indicted then sub-inspector Jyothi Rayudu, head constable P Santoshamma and constables Raghava Rani and P V Ragini.
It held that Krishna Kumari's death was caused by injuries inflicted at the police station and rejected the police contention that she had committed suicide after giving herself up to the police.
The panel also held that the victim was wrongly confined in the police station without a formal arrest. But other senior officers of the Vijayawada police got a clean chit.
It all began on April 30, 1999, when the Payakarapuram police station got a complaint from Gandikota Venkateswarlu that his daughter Gowri had gone missing on April 19. The complainant suspected Kona Krishna Kumari and Vijaya alias Padma.
The police registered a case and deputed two constables to trace the women, but in vain. Subsequently, Krishna Kumari herself came to the Payakarapuram police station and was sent to the all-woman police station, though the first information report regarding the missing woman did not implicate her. On May 6, she died in the police station.
Sub-Inspector Jyothi Rayudu claimed that she had hanged herself from the ventilator. But the post-mortem report and inquest found that Krishna Kumari had sustained injuries at the police station. "The evidence clearly establishes that the deceased did not die due to strangulation because of hanging," the panel said, accusing the police personnel of cooking up a story about suicide.
In the action-taken report, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said the director general of police had initiated action against the personnel responsible for the killing.
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