Hyderabad, September 25: Days after Divya, an engineering student, was battered to death, the Cyberabad Police finally apprehended her killer, A Venkata Sekhar, here on Friday. The 24-year-old, clad in a simple dress, appeared detached and unrepentant as he narrated the circumstances that prompted him to bludgeon the girl with a baseball bat.
“I did everything possible for my ‘love’ but I could not digest her ‘betrayal’,” he claimed casting aspersions on Divya’s character. On the fateful night of September 19 when Divya went to Sekhar’s flat at the Hill Colony in Vanasthalipuram, she received an SMS from her schoolmate Pradeep which sent Sekhar into a mad frenzy. “I killed her on the spur of the moment. Apart from betraying me by moving closely with Pradeep, she had even tried to blackmail me with the love letters I sent,” Sekhar, the 24yearold BTech graduate, alleged.
Throughout the press briefing, the murderer sought to play the jilted lover to perfection, going to the extent of claiming that during the heated argument he had with Divya, she had accused him of being a drug addict and mad.
However, the police offered a different version. “It was a premeditated murder. Buying a baseball bat appears unusual,” Cyberabad Police Commissioner S Prabhakar Reddy pointed out. “Divya and Sekhar met three years ago. He was one year senior to her at the Vignan Engineering College. They soon became friends and began moving closely. Divya, though, was often seen in the company of her childhood friend Pradeep Kumar, a BTech student of ACE College of Engineering, Ghatkesar,” Prabhakar Reddy told reporters. “Sekhar developed a grudge against Divya for being intimate with Pradeep. Their relationship had been strained for the past six months,” he said.Sekhar invited Divya and Pradeep to his flat to “settle” the “differences” he had with the girl. But she went alone as Sekhar told her he wanted to have one last “talk” before leaving for Mumbai. “Both watched a movie online. Divya, meanwhile, received an SMS from Pradeep. This infuriated Sekhar and they had an argument following which Sekhar attacked the girl with the baseball bat,” Prabhakar Reddy explained.According to the top cop, Sekhar sought to mislead the investigators by sending SMSes that he was going to commit suicide. The police are yet to ascertain if Divya was sexually assaulted. “We are awaiting medical reports,” Prabhakar Reddy said. Sekhar, nonetheless, was firm in his defence. “Everyone in the college knew we both were in love for the past two years. I did everything for her but she betrayed me. After she got close to Pradeep, I returned her love letters but she didn’t and moreover threatened to blackmail me prompting me to kill her,” he said. As for the baseball bat, he said he had bought it a long time back.Divya’s family, on their part, termed the police investigation “unfair” and accused them of assassinating their girl’s character.
–Agencies