HYDERABAD: After being on run for more than 24 hours, suspended Marredpally inspector K Nageswara Rao, facing charges of rape and attempt to murder, surrendered before the Special Operation Team (SOT), Rachakonda, on Sunday night.
While talk about Rao turning himself in started doing the rounds right from Sunday morning, it was only around 8.30 pm that police confirmed the news.
The suspended inspector was on the run since July 9, day after he was booked for allegedly raping a woman in Vanasthalipuram. The survivor is the wife of a person that the Task Force police, led by Rao, arrested in connection with an ATM fraud case in 2018. The man was subsequently employed at the cop's personal farmhouse, in Ibrahimpatnam.
"A special police team comprising SOT and Vanasthalipuram police of Rachakonda police has taken inspector K Nageswara Rao into custody," a Rachakonda police official confirmed. He added that Rao has been charged with Sections 452 (house-tresspass), 376 (2) (being a police officer commits rape), 307 (attempt to murder), 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) of the IPC along with Section 30 of the Arms Act.
The accused cop is expected to be produced before the magistrate on Monday.
According to the complainant, Rao went to the survivor's residence in Vanasthalipuram on July 8, while her husband was away buying food, barged into the house and committed the offence. When her husband returned and found the house locked from inside, he realised his wife was in trouble.
Though he forcibly entered and tried to attack Rao with a stick, the cop brandished his revolver at the couple and threatened to kill them. Later, he allegedly made them get into his private car and forced the husband to drive him out of the city at gunpoint. Rao, the complainant alleged, even warned of foisting a false prostitution case against the couple if their disobeyed him. But enroute, the man rammed the car into a divider at Ibrahimpatnam. From there, the couple escaped and boarded a bus back to Hyderabad. The next day, they approached the Vanasthalipuram police and lodged a complaint.
Meanwhile, the police also registered a suo moto case against Rao, with regard to the accident. Following the developments, Hyderabad police commissioner C V Anand suspended Rao on Saturday.
