- A 20-year-old engineering student was forced to consume pesticide by her lecturer in Telangana
- Lecturer Naveen Kumar made her write a suicide note blaming another man for alleged sexual assault
- Akshitarani died in hospital after delayed medical treatment following the poisoning
A 20-year-old engineering student from Telangana consumed pesticide and left a suicide note for her family. She was rushed to a hospital while her family was informed about the incident. The woman died during treatment. Police registered a case of death by suicide. What appeared to be an open-and-shut case took a dramatic turn after police found that the woman was forced to consume pesticide and that everything that followed was part of a plan.
The woman, identified as Thandra Akshitarani, met Naveen Kumar, an outsourced lecturer at the Singareni Collieries Polytechnic in Naspur, while pursuing her diploma. Their relationship went downhill after Akshitarani moved to Hyderabad to pursue a degree in mining engineering and subsequently met Ravi Kumar during an apprenticeship at a Singareni mine.
Kumar allegedly could not bear Akshitarani drifting away and building a relationship with Ravi Kumar.
“Naveen could not tolerate Akshitarani distancing herself from him and getting close to Ravi Kumar. He developed a grudge against the two of them,” Peddapalli Deputy Commissioner of Police B Ram Reddy said.
According to police, on September 12, Kumar intercepted Akshitarani near the FCI crossroads while she was returning home. He allegedly took her in his car, made her write a note blaming Ravi Kumar for alleged sexual assault, and forced her to consume pesticide.
Kumar allegedly delayed medical treatment for Akshitarani. He later used her phone to contact her father, allegedly attempting to make the family believe she had killed herself.
Akshitarani was taken to the Godavarikhani government hospital on September 12 and died the following day.
Police relied on CCTV footage, call logs, call recordings, and other technical evidence to solve the murder mystery.
The evidence helped police reconstruct the sequence of events and identify Naveen as the main accused. Police arrested both Naveen Kumar (38) and Ravi Kumar (35), a Singareni overman, on September 20. A car and mobile phones were seized as part of the investigation.
A separate investigation is underway into Akshitharani's allegations of a forced physical relationship against Ravi Kumar. His wife, however, disputed the allegations and said he had been wrongly implicated, claiming that an internal Singareni inquiry had cleared him.
