(From left) Sanjay, Srinivas and Harikrishna speaking to the media in Warangal, a few hours before the encounter. Telegraph picture

Hyderabad, Dec. 13: Police last night shot dead three young men arrested for throwing acid on two college girls, saying the accused had attacked personnel after being taken to a forest where they had hidden their acid stocks.

The first-known “encounter” deaths of acid attackers — hours after their families had persuaded them to surrender — left public opinion divided in the state.

Rights groups and Opposition parties were outraged but the Warangal district police earned praise from some women’s organisations as well as friends and relatives of the victims, one of whom is critical with 60 per cent face burns.

After the trio’s arrest yesterday, principal accused Srinivas Rao, 23, a businessman’s son and college dropout, had boasted before TV cameras: “We had practised our aim for 15 days on a doll in the Mamunur forests (before the acid attack).”

Srinivas and college students Sanjay, 22, and Harikrishna, 23, had attacked Swapnika and Pranita, both final-year students of the Kakatiya Institute of Technology, Warangal, on Wednesday.

Swapnika, accused by Srinivas of jilting him, was the target; Pranita, who is recovering from minor burns, just happened to be with her.

Details of the 10.30pm “encounter” remain sketchy. The police claimed they had taken the accused — who were not handcuffed — to the Mamunur forest, 30km from Warangal, to seize their acid stocks and getaway motorcycle when the trio attacked them with acid. No policemen suffered acid burns.

PTI quoted the Warangal superintendent of police, V.C. Sajjanar, as saying the youths had also aimed a country-made pistol at the personnel, but there was no explanation where the gun came from.

Srinivas had paid Sanjay and Harikrishna, both students of Masterji College and friends of his younger brother, a hefty sum to help him carry out the attack, officers alleged.

Sambaiah, Harikrishna’s father, said: “Burdened by the guilt of my son, I personally persuaded him to surrender. Now he is dead within 24 hours.”

Pranita, who was to join Infosys after a successful campus interview, said from her hospital bed: “I am not satisfied with Srinivas’s death. Throwing acid on him alone would have allayed our pain. He should have suffered the same agony.”

The CPM and the Telugu Desam demanded a judicial probe. CPM leader B.V. Raghavulu said that “encounters” — which have killed eight people in the past year — seemed to be a “routine police strategy to eliminate troublesome people”.

“Why were the boys taken to the forests at night?” asked actor-politician Chiranjeevi.

But Punyawati, state president of CPM women’s wing AIDWA, said: “It is heartening to see culprits against women being firmly dealt with.”

Sandhya, chief of the Progressive Organisation for Women, said: “Now they (police) have done some justice.”

Human Rights Forum secretary K. Balagopal accused the police of killing the youths “in cold blood”. Revolutionary poet Gaddar, who has often protested “encounters” against Maoists, said: “The police cannot become judges.”

Srinivas, a dropout from a Bangalore engineering college, had told the media Swapnika had dumped him after a relationship of about two-three months. “She was roaming with a classmate. Her boyfriend Karthik and his friends had attacked me. I wanted revenge.”

The trio followed the girls from their college on a stolen motorcycle and stopped them at a desolate place, an officer said.

“I am happy that God had punished them. But they got easy death without pain,” Swapnika’s mother Srilatha said.

Father Devender said Swapnika had undergone 15 surgeries — including skin grafts — in three days and would need half a dozen more. Unconfirmed reports said she might lose her eyesight. Trans Dyne, a medical transcription company, has offered jobs to Swapnika and Pranita when they recover.

Srinivas’s family, indoors since Wednesday, did not turn up at the hospital to receive his body after post-mortem.

“My son’s death should be a lesson against such actions by young men. I am happy his ordeal has ended, though it’s a personal loss to me,” said father Singa Rao, an eminent builder, over the phone.