Vaishnavi

Hyderabad, Feb. 3: Her dad’s little darling, Naga Vaishnavi’s sleeping head rested on her father’s chest every night when she slept.

Even in death, she nestled against his cold body.

The little girl would never know but her father had died of shock, unable to bear the loss of his kidnapped daughter whose freedom he was ready to buy at any cost.

The bag of bones and ashes of the 11-year-old, killed and burnt in a furnace by her abductors, rested on her father P. Prabhakar’s body during their last journey at Vijayawada yesterday.

It was tragedy twice over for Vaishnavi’s mother Narmada Devi, who fainted after being told on Monday evening that her daughter had been found dead. Hours later, Prabhakar, 50, a liquor merchant in the coastal Andhra Pradesh city, suffered a cardiac arrest.

But Narmada Devi didn’t know her husband, too, was dead. Relatives told her only at the time of the funeral. She collapsed again.

In Governorpet, Vijayawada, women and neighbours sobbed as the funeral procession for the father and daughter winded through the streets. ‘The killers should be publicly shot dead,” a woman cried.

Thousands lined the streets. Among them were a host of VIPs that included former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, actor-politician Chiranjeevi and ministers Dharmana Prasad Rao and Pitani Satyanarayana.

Today, investigators said four cars and three teams of killers had been hired by Venkateswarrao Gowd, the arrested brother of Prabhakar’s first wife Venkataravamma who was locked in a property dispute with the liquor merchant.

Vaishnavi’s body was found near a foundry owned by Gowd and his family, though Venkataravamma denied she was behind the kidnap and later distanced herself from her brother.

Police sources said the kidnap and murder were planned over nearly three months, right down to keeping the boiler-cum-furnace ready.

“They had orders to burn the body completely,” a source said, quoting Marla Srinivas Rao, one of the alleged masterminds now in custody.

Sources said both Gowd and Srinivas Rao had confessed.

Police sources said a team of five had surveyed the 7km route from Vaishnavi’s home to her school. Another team kept an eye on the traffic while a third forced the car carrying the girl to stop and killed the driver before speeding off in the same vehicle.

“Uncle, please let me go. My daddy will give you whatever you ask,” Vaishnavi had pleaded with the kidnapper who kept her pinned down in the back seat.

When they reached Sitanagaram, 10km from Vijayawada, the kidnappers shifted Vaishnavi into another car, which sped towards Guntur, about 35km from Vijayawada. Somewhere on the way, Vaishnavi’s body was bundled into a plastic container picked up from a bar owned by Gowd.

The kidnappers then met Rao at a deserted spot and transferred the lifeless body into another car. The car went around Guntur for hours before getting the all-clear from the factory where the body was burnt.