Hyderabad: A court in Hyderabad on Wednesday sentenced a temple priest to life imprisonment for killing a 30-year-old woman with whom he was having extramarital relations.
Ayyagari Venkata Surya Sai Krishna, a priest of a temple in Saroornagar, had killed the woman in 2023 when she began demanding he marry her. He had dumped her body in a manhole behind the Maisamma temple, where he was working as a priest.
The Rangareddy district court found Venkata Sai guilty of the crime and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The court also sentenced him to seven years for wiping out the evidence and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000.
Shamshabad police produced all the evidence in the court, leading to the priest’s conviction and sentence.
The shocking murder of the young woman came to light on June 9, 2023.
The accused, who was already married and the father of two children, was having extramarital relations with Apsara, a resident of Saroornagar. As the woman was exerting pressure on the priest for the marriage, he hatched a plot to eliminate her.
According to police, he took Apsara to Sultanpalli in Shamshabad mandal on the city outskirts in a car on June 3. They had a heated argument over her marriage proposal, and the priest killed her by smashing her head with a boulder. He bundled the body in a bag, kept it in the car and brought it back to Saroornagar, where he dumped it in a manhole.
The accused then lodged a complaint with Shamshabad police that his relative Apsara had gone missing after he had dropped her off at the airport. He told police that she stopped taking calls from June 4 and her phone was later switched off. Police registered a case and took up investigation.
After checking the CCTV footage and mobile signals of Sai Krishna, police found that the complainant himself was the killer. He was arrested, and during the questioning, confessed to killing the woman.
(IANS)
