For 82-year-old Ramlolu Hanuma Reddy, who was born and raised in Hazipur village, there has been no tragedy of this proportion in his village.
“I had only heard and seen such scenes in movies, but girls raped, killed and buried in a well in this very village is terrible,” he says, with eyes widened. He is an immediate neighbour of the main suspect of multiple cases of rape and murder of teenage girls in the village, Marri Srinivas Reddy.
The villagers have been in shock after the first case of murder surfaced on April 26. With the reports of police exhuming the body of another victim and search for the body of a third victim, the villagers seethed with anger.
On Tuesday, scores of angry villagers came with rods and hammers to the suspect’s house by 8 a.m. In less than half-an-hour, the newly-built house was set on fire, the facade and stairs broken, doors chopped and all household items heaped in the centre and burnt to a cinder.
The suspect’s old house made with a tiled roof, adjacent to the new structure, was also destroyed. Heaps of items continued to burn and smoke billowed from the building for the rest of the day, epitomising the anger of the villagers.
The irate villagers, learning that Srinivas Reddy was reportedly the person behind rapes and murders of a 14-year-old, a 18-year-old and a Class VI student, assumed missing in April 2015, could not be pacified.
A few cameramen and TV reporters also faced the brunt of the anger and policemen could only remain mute spectators. Armed Reserve Police, senior officials, including DCP K Narayana Reddy and ACP Bhujanga Rao, tahsildar and other revenue officials were at the village.
Groups of villagers gathered at the gram panchayat and at the old wells where the bodies were found, they broke down when speaking to visitors, leaders and media.
“A person like this or his property should not be in this village,” the villagers said, justifying the destruction. Parents of Srinivas Reddy — Bal Reddy and Anasuya — who own three acre farm land which also has the abandoned wells, left the village by 3 p.m. bus the previous day.
Past record
It has emerged that Srinivas Reddy was arrested in 2017, along with four others on the charge of rape and murder of a woman in Kurnool city on December 27, 2016. The accused had later got bail and returned to his village, sources said. Circle Inspector of Police from Rachakonda Police Commissionerate Ashok came to the city on Tuesday to collect details of the murder case.