Telangana encounter case: Clues team fails to throw light into shootout

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad police Clues team, which inspected the crime scene after the alleged shootout between Cyberabad police and the four accused involved in the Disha case, provided little to no information during the deposition on Monday.

During his questioning by the commission formed to probe the case, it was revealed that Dr Venkanna, the head of Hyderabad Clues team, reportedly only collected GSR (gunshot residue) resamples from the men who allegedly fired at the police and not discharged his duties as per the book.

Dr Venkanna claimed that the crowd wandered into the cordoned area, making it difficult for the Clues team to do their job. Meanwhile, cross examining of the then Cyberabad police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar has been postponed to October 7.

As many as 51 photographs and 25 videos were recorded on December 6, 2019, by the Clues team officials who arrived at the scene of offence at around 11 am. “We received a request from the officials at around 9.30 am on December 6, 2019. The team, including M. Bhanu, a photographer, Ramachandra, a videographer, and Arun, a home guard level crime scene officer, reached the spot at around 11 am. Another Clues team from the Cyberabad police accompanied us and we helped the investigating officer (IO), Sridhar Kumar, in collecting material evidence from the spot by cordoning the area with the help of a ‘crime scene, do not cross’ tape. It took us from 11.30 am till 6.30 pm to finish our duties,” Dr  Venkanna told the commission on Monday.

When the commission asked how did the Clues team assist the police, Dr Venkanna repeatedly replied that they provided gloves, packing material, photographers and videographers. It was only after further intense questioning that the official revealed that he collected GSR from the hands of the accused who had 9mm pistols.

The GSR was said to be collected with a cotton swab along with distilled water, to which the commission asked why he did not use nitric acid as mentioned by the guidelines mandated by the MHA (ministry of home affairs). The official initially replied that collecting GSR was the work of the PME (postmortem examination) doctor, to which the commission furiously asked him to back up his statement by showing them from where he referred it. After a while, he told them that they had taken a few samples as GSR quantity depleted with the passage of time.

Meanwhile, the IO had previously confirmed that the victim’s articles were not sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory and that there was no way of finding the fingerprints of the deceased men on them. As per the report, two of them used 9 mm pistols.

The IO called the fingerprint bureau to collect the pistols. According to him, the bureau said that due to the rough surface of the pistols, fingerprints were not traceable and he had recorded this information in his case diary. He said the accused snatched the pistols from the pouches of Venkateswarlu and from the waist of Narasimha Reddy but he did not send the pouch for fingerprint examination. He also confirmed that the fingerprints of the accused were not found on the pistols, pouch, sticks/rod and on the articles of the victim.