Decade-old murder mystery cracked

HYDERABAD: The Shahalibanda police solved has a murder committed about ten years ago in Choutuppal police station limits and arrested six of the seven alleged killers on Saturday. The body of 22-year-old Uma Shanker, a resident of Kurmaguda in Hammalwadi, was found in a well ten years ago.
He had been stabbed to death. However, Shanker’s family did not know about the murder till Saturday as he had been listed as missing and the murdered body had not been identified.It was only after the accused identified the photograph of Shanker that it came out that the murdered man was the same as that who had gone missing. The investigations into both the cases were closed in 1995.
On Saturday, the deceased’s brother, Shukla, visited the Shahalibanda police station and told them that he had come to know that Shanker’s friends were responsible for his “disappearance�. The police rounded up Shanker’s friends Ch Kumar, R Devender Reddy, A Praveen Kumar, A Sridhar, E Jagdish and interrogated them. The suspects broke down and confessed to the murder. Shanker’s former gang members told the police that they used to run an extortion racket in Kurmaguda.
Shanker, who was ten years older than the rest of the gang members, had made himself the gang leader and used to insult the younger boys. Upset by these insults, the rest of the gang is said to have eliminated Shanker. And in August, 1993, Shanker’s gang members M Sridhar, Cheguri Kumar, R Devender Reddy, A Praveen Kumar, A Sridhar, E Jagdish Kumar, A Suresh allegedly stabbed Shanker to death at Dharmajiguda village in Choutuppal. Six out of the seven alleged killers have been arrested and only A Suresh is at large.