She called up sister, scared by presence of some drivers.

A woman veterinarian, who was raped and killed on November 27, called up her sister when the lorry driver offered help and told her that she was scared by the presence of some drivers.

She died of asphyxiation while being raped as the killers gagged and smothered her. “Shiva, a cleaner who took the scooter for repair, returned and raped her,” Cyberabad Commissioner of Police V.C. Sajjanar said in Hyderabad on November 29.

Around 10.30 p.m., they shifted her body to the lorry and carried it 28 km to Chatanpally, where they set it ablaze at an underpass, he said. Then, they returned to Shamshabad and parked the vehicle at a safe place, before delivering bricks at a construction site in Attapur. When the family members tried to contact her, the victim’s mobile phone was switched off, and they approached the RGI Airport police around 11 p.m. and filed a complaint.

On Thursday, the charred body was found at an underpass on the Hyderabad-Bengaluru national highway.

Telangana Home Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali stoked a controversy by saying that the woman should have called the police rather than her sister. However, sources close to Mr. Ali, who visited the parents of the veterinarian, said he was only trying to say that the police intervention could have helped her.

As the body of an unidentified woman was spotted at Siddulagutta in Cyberabad on Friday night, Mr. Sajjanar rushed teams to the spot. The body, engulfed in flames, was lying behind a compound wall of a temple. A Telugu film shoot was on nearby. Some people of the locality saw flames and tried to douse them. “But by then the woman was charred to death,” Shamshabad ACP Ashok Goud said.

‘Monitoring the case’

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s son and Municipal Administration Minister K.T. Rama Rao said he would “personally monitor the case”.

“Outraged and deeply anguished by the murder... I am confident that @TelanganaDGP & the police will catch the animals who committed this heinous crime & deliver justice at the earliest. I’ll personally monitor the case too. Anyone in distress, please dial 100,” he wrote on Twitter.

In a tweet, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: “...How anyone could subject another human being to such terrible, unprovoked violence is beyond imagination. My thoughts & prayers are with the victim’s family at this time of immense grief.” Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy said he was in touch with officials of the Telangana government so that those involved in the murder were punished. “The Ministry of Home Affairs will send an advisory to all States as a precautionary measure so that no such incident takes place in future,” he told reporters outside Parliament in New Delhi.