Hyderabad, March 30: Nothing is more paradoxical than this. The city police are preparing the grounds to secure the conviction of Bhanu Kiran but they are not able to catch him even 85 days after he allegedly shot dead factionist Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy alias Suri!
A day after the killing of Suri, the police top brass exuded confidence that they would apprehend Bhanu in a few hours since they kept a tab on his movements and that of his associates. Days and even months are passing by, but there is no trace of the man the police in the State capital want the most.
Investigators believed they zeroed in on Bhanu when his gunman Manmohan Singh and three others were arrested nearly a month after Suri’s murder. They realised Bhanu Kiran was too clever for them as he left no evidence to track him. Singh’s confession made it clear that Bhanu was aware how the police track movements of an accused by analysing mobile phone calls. “Since he was arrested twice by the Commissioner’s Task Force (TF) earlier in other cases, he became familiar with the criminal tracking methods adopted by TF officials,” an investigator said.
According to Singh, Bhanu realised that using a mobile phone meant landing in the TF net. Hence, he simply stopped using mobile phones soon after committing the murder. “To evade the police, he would travel even 50 to 100 km to contact a person, that too from a landline phone,” Singh told his interrogators. This blocked the main source of police surveillance. Secondly, no dedicated team is working on the clues continuously since the murder was reported. All TF teams were on the look-out for Bhanu for the first few days. As the clues led them nowhere, the special teams got reduced to one with a single Inspector and four Sub-Inspectors. Meanwhile, the case was transferred to the Central Crime Station where some teams started working on the complaints lodged against Bhanu Kiran relating to extortion, land deals and cheating. A couple of special teams went to different States only to return empty handed. These teams and Task Force officials rarely shared their inputs and intelligence.
The pro-Telangana agitation, including the recent ‘Million March’ violence and security arrangements for the Assembly sessions, became equally important forcing them to focus all energy and men on specific issues.
“More than consequences of arrest, Bhanu fears threat to his life from Suri’s associates compelling him to be underground as long as possible,” an investigator said. Some officers feel Bhanu should have been chased more vigorously when he was on the run instead of breaking heads on his whereabouts after he reached a safe shelter.
-Agencies