HYDERABAD: The safe house where the four accused were kept by cops before the alleged encounter was in the spotlight on Wednesday during the hearing of the threemember SC-appointed inquiry panel probing the killings in the veterinarian Disha rape and murder case.
Both the manager and watchman of Ravi Guest House (safe house) at Mirzaguda in Narsingi deposed before the commission on Wednesday. Manager Anil Kumar said that he had been working at the guest house owned by AP MLA Satya Prasad since 2012. Kumar said he had taken it on lease from 2017 till 2020 for dairy business and the guest house was subsequently sold by the owner. However, Kumar said there was no written agreement regarding his job or lease.
He said that ACP V Surender along with Narsingi inspector Ramana Goud and a few others rented out the guest house on December 4, 2019, to house the four accused for 10 days. He said cops merely told him it was for investigation and he did not ask for more details. A receipt was issued on a white paper with a Re 1 revenue stamp for an initial payment of Rs 3,000 for three days. Exactly three days later, on December 6, the four accused were killed in the alleged encounter.
On being asked if he could produce similar rental deeds executed by other occupants, Kumar said it was a private property and not a commercial property.
When commission’s advocate Virupaksha Dattatreya Gouda asked him why he did not mention anything about CCTVs (mentioned in rental agreement, but not installed) either in his affidavit or in his statement to police, Kumar said “they did not ask about CCTV cameras”. There was some discrepancy between the statement of Kumar and watchman B Venkateswara Rao on another watchman Sambaiah’s presence at the guest house.
Kumar that Rao was the watchman, who also worked at a nearby farm, and Sambaiah had worked briefly in 2017. While Rao said that Sambaiah had left a day before the cops arrived and had asked him to fill in for him (Sambaiah). Rao said that he did not clean the rooms till the cops were there. On December 6 the cops left in two batches during the early hours, he said.
