He had led a similar encounter in Warangal in 2008 and had earned the epithet ‘the encounter cop’

Hyderabad:  The encounter of all the four accused in the Hyderabad veterinarian’s rape and murder case is somewhat similar to an alleged encounter that happened in Warangal, eleven years ago. The top cop who is handling the Hyderabad vet’s rape case, Cyberabad Police Chief Vishwanath C. Sajjanar, was the Superintendent of Police in Warangal, at the time of that encounter. 

In December 2008, the AP Police gunned down three men accused of throwing acid on two women engineering students. The students — Swapnika and Pranitha — of the Kakatiya Institute of Technology in Warangal town were attacked after Swapnika had rejected the proposal of Srinivas, one of the accused. Srinivas Rao, 25, the main accused in the case, and his associates P. Harikrishna, 24, and B. Sanjay, 22, were killed in the encounter.

Similar to this morning’s encounter, the then SP said that a Police team had gone with the accused to the scene of the crime to collect evidence. However, the men reportedly tried to attack the cops with crude bombs. Sajjanar had said that the cops opened fire in self-defence, killing all three accused.

Sajjanar, a low profile cop till then, earned the epithet ‘the encounter cop’ then. The arrests were made 48 hours within the attack on the girl and the encounter happened within days. Though the families of the accused and rights activists had questioned the encounter, Sajjanar became a local hero.