A former CRPF constable, BA Umesh Reddy confessed to raping 18 women. The police, however, say that number is above 20.
Published Nov 05, 2022 | 2:38 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 06, 2022 | 7:46 AM
Umesh Reddy pic - Supplied
Umesh SK, attached with the Kalasipalaya Police Station of Bengaluru in 1997 as a police sub-inspector (PSI), had no idea that the accused he had detained in a petty case would one day be sentenced to death for the dozens of other, much more heinous crimes he had committed.
Umesh told South First on Saturday, 5 November — a day after the Supreme Court commuted Umesh Reddy’s death penalty and awarded him life imprisonment, albeit with riders — that it was a complaint about an unidentified person stealing women’s undergarments from clotheslines in a residential area at VV Puram in the city that put him face to face with the psychopath.
He said that on receiving a radio flash about the complaint, he and his team reached the spot and detained “a well-built person who pleaded innocence”.
Umesh SK recalled: “While we were about to hand him over to the VV Puram police, the Mico Layout police personnel informed us that the man we had detained was a dangerous criminal, wanted in several sexual assault and murder cases.”
Thus it was that Reddy was handed over to the Mico Layout police station for further investigation, Umesh SK, now a retired Superintendent of Police, told South First.
He recalled that Reddy was like any other normal person in appearance, and would respond promptly when asked something.
The cops were flabbergasted when they learnt that he could go to any extent to rape or kill a woman without any reason.
The Supreme Court of India. (Creative Commons)
When the Supreme Court on Friday commuted the death sentence of Umesh Reddy into life imprisonment for a minimum of 30 years, taking into account the fact that he had been in solitary confinement for 10 years, reactions from the law-enforcement community poured in.
Reddy, who was found guilty of rape and murder of a homemaker in 2006, was sentenced to death the same year by a sessions court in Bengaluru. The Karnataka High Court upheld the death sentence in 2011.
When his mercy petition to the President of India was rejected, Reddy approached the Karnataka High Court. After his writ petition was dismissed there, he approached the Supreme Court again.
In the apex court, it was contended that Reddy was kept in solitary confinement from 2006 to 2016, which was illegal, as per the judgement in the case of Sunil Batra Vs Delhi Administration and Others (1978).
Reddy’s counsel also relied on another case — Ajay Kumar Pal Vs Union of India (2015) — where too the concerned petitioner was segregated from the day he was awarded the death sentence till his mercy petition was disposed of. That was taken to be in violation of the law laid down by the court in Sunil Batra’s case, where the death sentence was commuted.
Taking note of these contentions and the records produced before the court, it observed: “Having considered the entirety of matter, in our view, the impact of solitary confinement was obviously evident in the instant case, as would be clear from the letter given by the medical professional on 06/11/2011 and the communication emanating from the jail on 08/11/2011.
“The incarceration in solitary confinement thus did show ill effects on the well-being of the appellant. In the backdrop of these features of the matter, in our view, the appellant is entitled to have the death sentence imposed upon him to be commuted to death sentence to life.”
The court also ordered: “If any application for remission is moved on his behalf, the same shall be considered on its own merits only after he has undergone actual sentence of 30 years. If no remission is granted, it goes without saying that as laid down by this court in Gopal Vinayak Godse Vs State of Maharashtra, the sentence of imprisonment for life shall mean till the remainder of his life.”
A senior practising high court advocate in Bengaluru, Siji Malayil, told South First that Reddy’s death sentence in one case had been commuted to life imprisonment for 30 years.
However, there were eight other cases of rape and a few murder cases in which he was convicted.
“That indicates he will spend the rest of his life in jail, given the court considers the sentence to run consecutively and not concurrently,” Malayil said.
BA Umesh Reddy was a CRPF constable working in Jammu and Kashmir in the late 1990s when he attempted to rape the daughter of his commandant. He fled the valley soon after the incident, and was subsequently dismissed from service.
He returned to his hometown in Chitradurga in Karnataka, where he joined the District Armed Reserve (DAR) as a policeman, concealing his background.
Reddy was first arrested in March 1998, after he raped and murdered a girl in Chitradurga. He would go on to rape several women, and end up murdering some of them as well.
He, however, was slippery, and escaped police custody and also from a high-security prison on separate occasions.
In one instance, he bought a few policemen chicken and rum from a dhaba while they were on their way to a court hearing in Bengaluru. Reddy coaxed the cops to open up the handcuffs so he could attend nature’s call, and escaped into the fields.
According to police sources, Reddy used to carefully select his victims: Mostly homemakers who would be at home and alone between 11 am and 2 pm. He would approach them on the pretext of asking for water or about an address.
According to the police, one of Reddy’s worst crimes was in Peenya, where a 37-year-old woman was found tied to a window grill. When her son arrived from school that evening, Reddy — who was still there — told him that his mother had been possessed by some evil spirit and that he was trying to get that spirit out of her. He fled the spot saying he was going to bring a doctor.
A retired police officer recalled: “When I had custody of him, he seemed to be a psychopath and pervert with no remorse: An individual who could not be reformed or brought back into the mainstream.”
Meanwhile, the cops also said Reddy used to steal the undergarments of his victims, keep them, and even wear them.
This the police discovered when they arrested him and found him wearing women’s undergarments.
In another instance, when he was arrested near the Yeshwantpura railway station in Bengaluru, it was discovered that he had put his luggage in the cloakroom. When the police checked his suitcase, they found bras, panties, sarees, and nighties.
