Hyderabad High Court tells CBI to register new FIR in Ayesha Meera case

Hyderabad: In a major development in the case of the rape and murder of B Pharmacy student Ayesha Meera, the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday entrusted the investigation of the decade-old case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, directing the CBI to investigate the case afresh by registering a new First Information Report.

The court also directed the CBI to issue another FIR with regard to the alleged destruction of material evidence in the trial court and find out who were the persons responsible for destroying the evidence during the pendency of the appeal before the High Court.

A division bench of Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice S.V. Bhatt was hearing a petition by Syed Iqbal Basha and Shamshad Begum, parents of Ayesha Meera, seeking a reinvestigation of the murder case of their daughter, and granted the order.

Taking a serious view of the destruction of case records and other materials seized by the police from the scene of the crime and produced before trial court, the bench said, “Disappearance of evidence from the trial court needs to be inquired; destroying the evidence is a culpable act which is punishable under law.”

The bench observed that “causing disappearance of court records, which are in the court’s custody, is unbearable. Court staff are not merely government servants, they have to help in judicial performance. This kind of incident sends wrong signals, and gives a bad image of judicial administration.”

The bench was critical of the alleged role of subordinate judicial officers in the destruction of records when the matter was sub judice. The Chief Justice said, “It is fuel to the fire of suspicion.”

Making it clear that the staff and judicial officers who were responsible for the destruction of the records would not escape blame, the bench concluded that a probe by an independent agency alone can bring the real culprits to book in the murder case and in the destruction of the records, and bring the case to a logical conclusion.

Timeline of the case

• Ayesha Meera was raped and murdered on December 27, 2007. Her body was found outside the toilet on the second floor of the Sri Durga Ladies Hostel in Ibrahimpatnam, where she was staying.
• In 2008, police arrested one Satyam Babu in a cell phone theft case and later declared that he had killed Ayesha.
• Ayesha’s parents alleged that the police had pinned the crime on Satyam Babu to misdirect the investigation as a relative of former Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Koneru Ranga Rao, was involved in the crime.
• The Mahila Court in Vijayawada, on September 10, 2010, convicted and sentenced Satyam Babu to life imprisonment.
• On March 31, 2017, the Hyderabad High Court acquitted Satyam Babu. It also ordered action against the police officials who investigated the case.
• Subsequently, the state government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to conduct a fresh probe.
• The Hyderabad High Court in January, 2018, agreed to supervise the investigation by the SIT.
• On October 12, 2018, the SIT informed the Hyderabad High Court that the records had been destroyed in the trial court on October 7, 2014, on the same day the court asked the Registrar General to conduct a probe into the destruction of records and submit a report in four weeks.