A 24-year-old woman was found dead at her grandmother’s house in Telangana’s Medchal-Malkagiri district, about 25 km from Hyderabad, on Friday morning, nearly a month after a 24-year-old man injected his HIV-infected blood into her over her refusal to marry him, police said.
According to an official from Pocharam IT Corridor police station, the woman was found hanging in her room at around 10 am when her grandmother went out to do some work.
The police arrested the accused, a relative of the victim, on March 15, and he is currently in prison on remand.
“Investigations with her relatives showed that she had been suffering from depression ever since the accused injected her with HIV-infected blood on March 11. She took this extreme step on Friday morning, when she was alone,” the police official said, adding that her body had been sent to Gandhi Hospital for autopsy.
The police, who initially booked a case under Section 109 (attempt to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act, 2023, against the accused, will change the case and add Section 306 (abetment to suicide), the police said.
According to the police, the woman’s father was originally planning to marry his daughter to the accused, who is also a relative of theirs. However, since the accused’s parents were HIV positive, it was feared that the accused would also be HIV positive.
Six months ago, the accused woman’s father took an HIV test at a laboratory in Uppal. “The test results showed that the accused was HIV positive. As a result, the woman’s family canceled the proposed marriage,” police said.
On March 11, when the woman was alone at home, the accused went to her house with a syringe containing his blood and forcefully injected it into her before fleeing. “The family then transferred her to a private hospital in Uppal. The woman told her parents that the accused forcibly injected her with a syringe containing his blood in an attempt to force her to marry him,” the police said.
Two days later, the family filed a complaint with the Pocharam IT Corridor police. Based on the complaint, we launched a manhunt for the accused and arrested him on March 15 and presented him before a local court that remanded him to judicial custody.
