A 35-year-old pregnant woman died after she jumped off a moving van to escape molestation by the driver and cleaner of the vehicle in Telangana’s Medak district, police said on Monday.
The incident happened on the Hyderabad-Nagpur National Highway 44 at Ravelli village of Toopran block late on Saturday night and the woman’s relatives lodged a complaint with the police on Sunday afternoon.
Police said Ude Kalavathi, a seven-month pregnant woman who sold old clothes, was returning to her village from Kompalli on the outskirts of Hyderabad along with her seven-year-old daughter Sirisha on Saturday night in a van after she missed the state-run RTC bus.
The driver asked Kalavathi to pay the toll fee at the Toopran toll plaza. The driver and cleaner attempted to rape her after travelling for a kilometre and she jumped off the moving van. The driver and the cleaner immediately forced her daughter to get down and fled the spot.
Local villagers reached the spot and realised that Kalavathi was dead. They immediately alerted the police, who informed her husband Regonda and other relatives at Potharajpalli village nearby.
“The daughter was not in a position to tell exactly what had happened inside the vehicle. Going by the closed circuit footage images, she first threw her bag of clothes out before jumping from the vehicle. The driver appeared to have applied the break and then moved again,” Toopran circle inspector Lingeshwar Rao told the Hindustan Times.
“Unless we apprehend the driver and the cleaner, we cannot tell what had happened in the vehicle,” he added.
Sirisha reportedly told her father that she had seen Kalavathi “fighting” with the driver and cleaner in the vehicle before jumping off.
“Based on the complaint by her relatives, we booked a case of suspicious death. If it is proved that she was molested during the investigation, we will add other sections of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) as well,” the inspector said.
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