Maniac Karthik Who Set Girl Ablaze In Lalapet Held

Vanga Karthik, 28, a resident of Indira Nagar in Lalapet, Secunderabad, who had set Sandhya Rani of Lalaguda ablaze after pouring petrol on her, was arrested in the wee hours of Friday and produced in court for judicial remand.

North Zone DCP Sumathi said that the accused had presented himself to the police and confessed to his gory crime.

Reports state that the victim, Sandhya Rani, who was working as a receptionist in Shanti Nagar at an aluminium fabrication unit named Lucky Traders, and the accused, Karthik, were co-workers until Karthik got fired. While certain sections of the media had suggested that the two had a brief relationship before the woman calling it off due to the accused's instability, the police have stated that the accused was a stalker who had been harassing the victim to marry him for over a year.

The victim had previously made a formal complaint of stalking to the owner of Lucky Traders, where they both had been working, following which he had been sacked.

The accused, however, persisted with his stalking, pestering the victim to marry him despite repeated rejections.

According to the statement given to the police by the victim‘s mother N Savithri, a resident of Lalapet Kaman, her daughter Sandhya Rani had gone to office on Thursday at 10 am. On her way, Rani had been accosted near Vidya Mandir School, Lalapet, by Karthik who had followed her and argued with her to marry him.

Upon the victim's blunt refusal to marry him, Karthik doused her with a bottle of petrol that he had carried with him and set her on fire, as a result of which she suffered burns on two hands and other parts of the body.

On being told about the incident, the mother rushed to the spot and shifted the victim to Gandhi Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries on Friday morning at 7:20 am.

Following the victim's death, the case against him was altered to have Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code added to it, DCP Sumathi said.

She also adding that the dying declaration of the victim had been recorded by the Magistrate, and CCTV images of the accused trailing the victim and entering into a heated argument had also been obtained.

ACP Gopalapuram, K Srinivas Rao, is investigating the case.