It was 5 am on Thursday, 28 November, and Narasimha, a resident of Chatanpally village under Shadnagar police station limits in Hyderabad, was on his way to milk cows. He cut across the Bangalore-Hyderabad Highway through an underpass and noticed something burning there.
“I ignored it thinking someone must have lit the fire to keep themselves warm in the cold,” Narasimha told The News Minute. But when he returned from the fields, some time past 8 am, he noticed that a human body was burning under the underpass.
“A part of the arm was not burnt and that’s what first caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I realised it was a body being burnt,” he said.
Madhuri* (name changed), a 26-year-old veterinary doctor, had gone missing on Wednesday night. Her family had spoken to her last around 9:30 pm. The veterinary doctor was barely 3.5 km away from her residence then.
Around 9:44 pm, her family realised that her phone was switched off. Her burning body was found 25 km away under an underpass near Chatanpally by Narasimha and his friend Sathyam, who first alerted the police. Madhuri was gang raped and murdered allegedly by four men, who are now in police custody.