Police in Telangana’s Karimnagar district on Monday retrieved three highly decomposed bodies of members of the same family from a car that plunged into a canal in Alugunuru nearly 20 days ago.
The dead were identified as Nareddy Sathyanarayana, 55, a businessman, his wife Radha, 50, and their 22-year-old daughter Vinayasri, a third-year student of dental medicine in Nizamabad.
Radha, a government teacher, was the younger sister of Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLA Dasari Manohar Reddy, who represents Peddapalli in the assembly.
Karimnagar’s commissioner of police VB Kamalasan Reddy said while speaking to reporters that the car had surfaced in the Kakatiya canal on the Godavari river near Yadavulapalli village after the water level receded due to stoppage of inflows for the last two days.
“Preliminary inquiries revealed that the family had left Peddapalli for Hyderabad on January 27. As the car was crossing the bridge at Alugunuru, it might have fallen off the bridge into the canal,” Reddy said in Karimnagar.
“We suspect the accident might have occurred due to over-speeding. Since the water level was too high at that time and nobody had noticed the accident. It had not come to our notice,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“We suspect the accident might have occurred due to over-speeding. Since the water level was too high at that time and nobody had noticed the accident. It had not come to our notice,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Reddy said no one from the victims’ family had lodged any complaint that they were missing since January 27.
“We are investigating the case from all angles,” he said.
The TRS leader said there was no dispute in his family or that of his sister’s.
“My sister and her family members regularly go on jolly trips. So, we thought this time, too, they might have gone on a long ride,” he said.
“I tried to speak to my sister a few days back, but it [the phone] was switched off. I thought maybe they were out of coverage area,” he added.
Two more accidents took place on the same bridge within a span of a few hours on Sunday.
A couple travelling on a motorcycle fell off the bridge into the canal on Sunday night.
The husband, Parankusam Venkata Narayana Pradeep, 32, was rescued by the police who were passing by but his wife Keerthana, 27, was washed away in the waters.
The body of the 27-year-old woman was later found caught in a fishing net a couple of kilometres away at Munjampalli village in early on Monday.
“The couple, who belonged to Ganneruvaram village, came from Hyderabad to attend a function and were going to a temple at Timmapur village, 10km away from Karimnagar city. Apparently, Pradeep lost control over his vehicle, when an insect had fallen into his eye,” sub-inspector of police, S Naresh Reddy, said.
Earlier on Sunday, a 48-year-old teacher Gandi Srinivas died on the spot and his wife Swaroopa, 40, suffered serious injuries, when a speeding truck hit their car from behind on the Alugunuru bridge. Their car plunged into the Kakatiya canal due to the impact.
Even as the police were controlling the crowd on the bridge, a constable fell from the bridge into the canal. The 57-year-old B Chandrasekhar succumbed during treatment in the hospital.