City police may get custody of ATM attack accused after fortnight

The city police will have to wait for at least 20 days to take Madhukar Reddy into custody to interrogate him for assaulting Jyothi Uday inside the Corporation Bank ATM centre near NR Square on November 19, 2013.

Reddy was produced before the magistrate at Madanapalle in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday morning. He was remanded in judicial custody for 15 days. He has been lodged in Madanapalle sub-jail.

Meanwhile, the joint operation by the Karnataka police and the AP police in tracing Reddy has come under sharp criticism. Many senior officers stressed that the operation lacked professionalism, planning and leadership.

“The search operation was carried out for the first six months properly. It derailed after that. Police inspectors deputed for the operation were withdrawn. The inspectors, who weren’t part of the operation earlier, were sent in groups to Andhra. Coordination with the Andhra police ground staff was the biggest challenge. Proper planning did not happen from investigating officers of both the states,” a senior officer, who had monitored the case for six months, told DH.

“Our teams went to Andhra only to verify the information and returned to Bengaluru. Senior officers were given the impression that Reddy could be dead or be hiding in naxal-infested areas,” he said.

The city police repeatedly claimed that they had checked the background of prisoners in every prison across South India. They compiled the data after visiting prisons in South India, but it did not show anything about Reddy’s background. They also had verified records at the Kadapa Central Prison where Reddy was lodged in connection with murder case in 2006. He had absconded while in judicial custody in 2011.

 “Our teams had Reddy’s fingerprints. Our men did not do a proper verification at the Kadapa Central Prison. It is also not known what information the jail authorities provided. We were very close to Reddy and professional work would have resulted in his arrest long ago,” a former head of the City police said.

Police Commissioner Praveen Sood told DH: “Coordination was never an issue between the two police forces. We had very good rapport with the AP police. In fact, the AP police contacted us after Reddy’s confessions to share the information.”

“The only evidence in the case was CCTV footage. We didn’t even know his name and background. It would have been a different tale had the police known his name,” he added.

“Our teams worked hard in AP for more than three months, but he was in Kerala. The efforts of our men finally yielded the result,” he said.