Murder of illicit lover sends Hyderabad priest into judicial custody

In Hyderabad’s Saroornagar, a city court has remanded a priest to judicial custody for the murder of a woman, 30, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Ayyagari Venkata Sura Sai Krishna, priest of the Maisamma temple who was arrested on Friday, was brought before a magistrate on Saturday morning. He was remanded to judicial custody and was transferred to Cherlapally Jail. According to reports, the 37-year-old accused was having an extramarital affair with Apsara, a resident of Saroornagar and a regular temple devotee.

In their investigation, police discovered that he murdered the woman because she was pressuring him to marry her.

It was revealed on Friday that the priest killed the woman and dumped her body in a manhole nearly a week earlier.

According to police, the priest killed the woman in Sultanpalli and dumped her body in a manhole in Saroornagar. Police say he took Apsara to Sultanpalli in Shamshabad mandal on the outskirts of the city on June 3.

After smashing her head with a boulder, the priest bundled her body in a bag, kept it in his car and brought it back to Saroornagar, where he dumped it in a manhole.

Later, the accused filed a complaint with the RGIA police station alleging that his relative Apsara was missing since June 3 after being dropped off at Shamshabad.

Apsara, who was supposed to go to Bhadrachalam with her friends, stopped taking calls from June 4 and her phone was later turned off, he told police.

Police opened an investigation after filing a report. The investigating officers discovered that the complainant’s details did not match the technical evidence, such as call data. Police investigated CCTV footage and Sai Krishna’s mobile phone signals. He was arrested and confessed to the crime while being questioned. The body was extracted from the manhole and taken to an autopsy.