Tuesday, February 11, 2014


Slain techie seen leaving LTT with man in CCTV, suspect from Hyderabad detained

S Ahmed Ali  TNN 

February 1, 2014

    Going by CCTV footage, a 40-year-old man from Hyderabad has been detained on suspicion of taking away 23-year-old Esther Anuhya from Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Kurla on January 5 soon after she arrived in the city. He has been brought to the city by crime branch and is being questioned.
    The software engineer went missing after arriving in the city from her hometown in Andhra Pradesh after Christmas vacation. Her half-burnt and partly-decomposed body was found in the mangroves near Kanjurmarg on January 16. It 

is suspected she was sexually assaulted before being killed, but her phone and ring were with her.
    CCTV footage from the station shows an unidentified thick-set man in white shirt and blue jeans carrying her luggage. Esther is walking alongside, glued to a cell phone. The man appears to have come to pick her up and may even have been acquainted with Esther. So far, the police had focused their probe on auto and taxi drivers operating outside LTT.
    Apart from the man’s identity, another riddle for the cops is that of the mobile phone seen in the footage. Esther’s personal phone, found near her body, had a dual SIM and no calls were made from either of her numbers after her train 
crossed the Maharashtra border. The possibilities that the cops are now probing is that either Esther had an additional phone which her family wasn’t aware of or that the phone belonged to the man carrying her luggage.
    A police and GRP team met Esther’s family in Hyderabad with the CCTV footage in a bid to identify him. They apparently said he wasn’t related to them.
    “Anuhya’s father S J S Prasad had instructed her to stay till sunrise (at the station) and we can’t understand why she ventured out. From the CCTV footage it appears that Anuhya is walking out with the man. We still don’t know who he is and whether he is receiving her or lured her with promises of a 
lift,” said a senior police officer, adding that a clearer picture will emerge by late night.
    Esther’s train had reached LTT at 4.55am on January 5. The spot where she alighted on platform 3 isn’t covered by CCTVs. “We started checking footage from other cameras at the terminus. Then we spotted Esther walking into a waiting hall in the old terminus. She did not stay in the waiting hall for long and walked out within minutes. Around 5.10am, we spotted her again in the CCTV grabs of platforms 4-5. This time, she was following the man who was carrying her luggage and seemed at ease. Why she ventured to platforms 4-5 when her train did not arrive there needs to be found out,” said a senior
official.
    The police have contacted TCS, where Esther worked, to inquire if the unidentified person works there or whether the company had sent someone to pick her up. The cops have also contacted her friends. “Our priority is to find out the phone number that she is seen using at the station. We have contacted mobile service providers. Data has been wiped out from her personal handset found near her body and we are trying to get it recovered through experts,” said an official.
    Cops have also made inquiries at Thiruvananthpuram where Esther had undergone training between July and September last year. 

HINT OF A BREAKTHROUGH 

THE CASE Software engineer Esther Anuhya, 23, (inset) went missing after alighting at LTT from a train on Jan 5. She was travelling back to the city where she worked with TCS from her hometown in AP. Her 
family finally found her half-burnt, partlydecomposed body in the mangroves near Kanjurmarg on January 16 
NEW FINDINGS
    
A 40-year-old man detained in Hyderabad on suspicion of taking Esther from the station
    He resembles a man seen in CCTV footage (right, foreground) of LTT carrying Esther’s luggage and walking at 5.10am. Esther is following, glued to a cell phone 

    Esther had got off a train on platform 3 around 4.55am at a spot not covered with cameras. CCTVs in the old terminus building show her entering the waiting room. But she exits soon after. She is then seen in the video grabs of platforms 4-5 leaving with the man 

QUESTIONS Who was the man carrying her luggage? 

    Whose cell phone was she using at that time? No calls had been made from her cellphone, found near her body, since she crossed 
into Maharashtra
Why did Esther head to platforms 4-5 at all?


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