Tirunagaru Maruthi Rao (52), the prime accused in the ‘honour killing’ of a Dalit youth, P. Pranay Kumar, in Miryalaguda, was found dead in a room at Arya Vysya Bhavan in Khairatabad here on Sunday morning.
Police suspect that Rao committed suicide by consuming an unidentified poisonous substance.
In a note purportedly left by him, Rao apologised to his wife forgive him and asked their daughter to live with his wife. It read: “ Girija, nannu kshaminchu. Amrutha, maa daggariki ra ’ (Girija, forgive me. Amrutha, live with your mother.)
“We suspect he resorted to the extreme step by consuming a poisonous substance. We did not find any bottle in the room. However, the exact reason will be known only after the autopsy report is out,” Saifabad inspector Ch. Saidi Reddy said.
In January 2018, his only daughter Amruthavarshini had got married to 24-year-old Pranay against his wishes.
He opposed the inter-caste marriage and allegedly hired assassins to kill his son-in-law. The killers hacked Pranay to death in broad daylight when he came out of a hospital with his pregnant wife after a routine medical check-up in Miryalaguda in September that year.
Rao, an influential businessman in Miryalaguda, who had been out on bail for the past few months, came to Hyderabad on Saturday evening to meet his advocate and checked into Room No. 306 of Arya Vysya Bhavan.
However, on Sunday his driver Bellamkonda Rajesh, along with the help of Bhavan’s staff, broke open the door when the victim did not respond even after repeated knocking on the door.
The victim’s wife Girija called and asked the driver to check on him as he was not responding to her repeated calls.
“When I entered the room after breaking the door, I found him lying in a prone position and tried to wake him up. But, he was motionless.
Soon, the staff alerted police, who rushed to the spot and shifted the body to Osmania General Hospital,” Mr. Rajesh said.
He said that they came to the Bhavan around 6.40 p.m. and after an hour he brought him some snacks. “Around 8.30 p.m. we had Pani Puri at a nearby stall and he went inside the room. Half an hour later, I gave him the documents, and he instructed me to sleep in the vehicle,” the driver said.
(Roshni - suicide prevention helpline: +914066202000)
