BHIMAVARAM (Andhra Pradesh), Dec 27 : The Andhra Pradesh police have solved the mystery of the dead body parcel case by arresting three people, police said on Friday.
Sridhar Varma, Penmetsa Sushma, and Chekuri Revathi were arrested for hatching ‘Operation Siddha-Chepa’ conspiracy to threaten Sagi Tulasi and her parents, Mudunuri Ranga Raju (60) and Mudunuri Hymavathi (56), in an attempt to take over their property.
On December 19, the body of a 47-year-old unidentified man was delivered to Mudunuri Ranga Raju’s home in Yendagandi village in West Godavari district, in a wooden box, accompanied by a letter demanding over Rs one crore from the family.
The deceased was later identified by police as B Parlayya from Gandhinagar, a homeless man who had no connection to the family’s disputes.
“To coerce Tulasi into relinquishing her share of the property, they explored all possible methods over six to seven months and plotted the crime…” said West Godavari district superintendent of police, Adnan Nayeem Asmi, addressing a press conference in Bhimavaram.
Police arrested Varma (37), Sushma (37) and Revathi (31). Varma and Sushma are in a live-in relationship, while Revathi is married to Varma.
According to the police, Revathi and Tulasi are the daughters of Raju and Hymavathi, who had a strained relationship.
Tulasi had started living with her parents in Yendagandi village after her husband went missing in 2012.
Due to some friction between Tulasi and her mother, she began living separately with her minor daughter and started constructing a house for herself at Jagananna Colony in Yendagandi.
Meanwhile, an anonymous person contacted Tulasi twice in September, offering to send construction materials such as tiles and paints as a donation for her house from the Rajamundry Kshatriya Foundation, police said.
The same person contacted her again in December, claiming to send some electrical goods in a box, which turned out to contain a dead body. The police investigation revealed that the anonymous person was Sushma.
Incidentally, Raju had allocated half an acre of agricultural land to each of his daughters and kept 1.4 acres for himself, while the house they were living in was registered in the name of his wife, Hymavathi.
Eyeing these assets, Varma and Revathi devised a plan to intimidate them using the dead body. As part of this plan, Varma and Sushma hired Parlayya for some work on their farmland on December 17, then got him drunk, police said.
They drove Parlayya to Vendram village in their car, strangled him to death with a wire, and then placed his body in a wooden box, which was later sent to Raju’s home in an auto rickshaw. Tulasi believed it was a box of electrical items promised as a donation.
To further intimidate Raju, Tulasi, and Hymavathi, Sushma wrote an anonymous letter demanding Rs 1.3 crore and attached it to the box, while Varma remained in constant contact with Revathi to update her on the box’s movements.
Once the box reached Raju’s home, they realized it did not contain electrical goods but a dead body, along with the letter demanding money.
Meanwhile, Varma assured his father-in-law and mother-in-law that he would arrange the money for them, but they would need to sell their fields to repay him later.
However, Tulasi rejected this idea and informed the police, prompting Varma to flee. This led to his arrest, along with his wife Revathi and girlfriend Sushma, police said.
Police have filed a case under BNS Sections 103 and 61(2) read with 3(5).
A total of 11 police teams worked tirelessly for more than a week to solve the sensational case. (PTI)
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