HYDERABAD, India — All day, every day, at a certain point along a highway leading out of Hyderabad, people stop their cars and get out to peer over the guardrail.

It was here, under a highway bridge, that four men torched the body of a young veterinarian after they gang-raped and suffocated her a few weeks ago in a case that horrified the country.

Nearby is another likely crime scene of note: In the green fields that gently roll away from the highway stands a ring of yellow police tape where the police gunned down the four accused men. The police say there was a shootout, and that they killed the men in self-defense. But that is now under investigation, and most people around here seem to believe it was a straight-up case of extrajudicial killing.

None of this happened in an isolated part of India or in some tough, broken place. It happened on the busy outskirts of one of India’s most up-and-coming cities: Hyderabad.