Hyderabad: Suspsnse over bullet in girl’s back

Hyderabad: Over the past 20 days, a story similar to the blockbuster movie Drishyam appears to be playing out at the Punjagutta police station wherein the police are failing to “break” a family and get to the heart of the story.

The case involves the chance discovery of a bullet embedded in the back of an 18-year-old student Asma Begum. She had gone to the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in October last year with a complaint of back ache. She told doctors that she had been having the ache for a year.

She returned on December 21, with the pain very much there. When doctors took her X-ray, a bullet was found embedded in her back. Doctors removed it after a surgery on December 22 and went to the police. Asma never told the doctors how the bullet got lodged there.The police has since summoned Asma Begum’s family more than a dozen times to question them to get details on how the bullet came to be lodged there. The family, in Drishyam style, has not dropped a hint. “We do not know anything,” is their standard reply.

The Panjagutta police, who assumed that they could get at the answer quickly, are at their wits end. “Examining them separately did not yield results. We examined them together and yet they had the same reply to give — that they do not know how she was hit,” an official said.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, investigation officer D. Nagaraju said, “We have questioned the victim and around 10 family members including her father, mother, brother and the man she is to get married to.”

The investigators tried all their usual techniques during questioning. They asked them questions related to the incident and even those which were indirectly linked. But in their short and crisp replies, the family revealed nothing that the investigators could pursue. “At the moment, we do not have a single clue about it. But we will continue to summon them and ask them,” another investigator said.

The police have no clue why the family was not revealing anything what interest they would have in hiding it. Enquiries near their house in Falaknuma also did not yield results.

The investigators are now pinning their hopes on the forensic report but it is unclear if that would be of much help. Sources said the forensic experts would only analyse the make of the weapon from which the bullet was fired. “If it is a country-made weapon, then it would be difficult for the police to proceed as anyone could be carrying an illegal firearm. If the weapon is of some other make, then may be we can get some clue,” an official said.