Hyderabad youth commits suicide in Visakhapatnam lodge
TNN Jan 19, 2014, 04.15AM IST
VISAKHAPATNAM: A 26-year-old PhD scholar from Hyderabad was found dead at a lodge in the RTC complex area here on Saturday after the police broke open the doors of his room following an alert by the lodge staff.
The youth has been identified as M Siva Teja, the second child of Rajasekhar Reddy, a private sector employee residing in Hyderabad's ECIL area. His parents originally belong to a village near Pulivendula in Kadapa district. Teja was doing his PhD at IIT-Mumbai.
Though the police suspect it to be a case of suicide, they are also investigating the murder angle as the scholar's face was found covered with a thick polythene sheet and they did not find any suicide note. The cops are also looking into the possibility of a love affair going awry as a reason for his suicide and they suspect the girl could be from the city.
According to sources, Siva Teja had landed in the city on January 16 and checked in at Aswini Lodge opposite the RTC complex in the Asilmetta area. Though he has relatives in the city, he chose to stay in the lodge. He was last spotted by the lodge staff on Friday morning when he stepped out to buy a water bottle.
The staff at the lodge knocked on his doors during lunch and dinner time on Friday but didn't get any response. Sensing something amiss when Siva Teja failed to respond to theirk door nocks on Saturday morning too, the staff immediately informed the Dwaraka Zone cops, who rushed to the lodged and broke open the doors of the room.
The cops, led by inspector Elia Babu and sub-inspector Soma Raju found the youth's body in a totally decomposed state in the bathroom. What was even more shocking was that the student's face was covered up to the neck in a polythene sheet and wrapped with a plastic tape and the fingers of both his hands too were taped.
According to sources, Siva Teja remained incommunicado since early this month and his worried parents had rushed to Mumbai after he could not be contacted over the past few days. A missing complaint was lodged at Andheri police station on January 13.
According to Siva Teja's relative Venkat Ram, who resides in Vizag, Teja had worked briefly in a Bangalore-based firm after completing his MTech and later quit his job to take up his PhD at IIT-Mumbai. "He last spoke to his parents on January 12 and since January 13 his phone was switched off. They sent his friend, who also studies at IIT Mumbai, to look for him but he found his room locked. Worried Teja's parents immediately rushed to Mumbai, spoke to the IIT Mumbai top brass and lodged a police complaint," said Venkat Ram.
The deceased youth's parents have rushed to Vizag after being informed by Vizag police about the incident. Siva Teja's body has been shifted to King George Hospital for autopsy.
