Bengaluru: How ATM attacker eluded cops

Bengaluru, 18 July 2018 [Fik/News Sources]: The city police have filed a chargesheet in connection with the brutal assault on 47-year-old woman Jyoti Uday at an ATM kiosk in N.R. Square Bengaluru in November 2013.

In the 217-page chargesheet submitted before the 6th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM), the police have stated that the accused Kondappagiri Madhukar Reddy confessed to attacking the woman as he had no money for food and alcohol, even after begging on the streets.  According to the chargesheet, before assaulting Jyoti, Reddy had attacked a woman with machete in Bathalapalli village in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh, inside her house where he went asking for drinking water.

Reddy attacked the woman’s face and neck with the machete, when she refused to give him her earrings and cash. He stole the woman’s earrings, ATM card and passbook, withdrew Rs 3,000 from that card and sold her earrings and phone. The money, however, did not last as Reddy was an alcoholic. He arrived in Bengaluru five days later and began sleeping on railway platforms and begging on the streets. When the money grew scarce, Reddy decided to rob people coming to withdraw cash from ATMs.

On November 19, 2013, he barged into Corporation Bank ATM in N.R. Square, when he saw Jyoti Uday enter the kiosk. He rolled down the shutter and threatened her with his toy gun to hand over the money.

“She told me that even if I harmed her, she would not give me her money. I squeezed her neck and demanded money. She told me that she would rather die than give into my threats. That’s when I hacked her head and neck with the machete. I wiped my bloody hands with her scarf, took her mobile phone, Rs 200 and her ATM card and fled,” Reddy stated in his  

confession. Reddy then boarded a train to Hindupur from the City Railway station and there he sold Jyoti’s phone for Rs 500 and took up a room at a lodge. As he turned on the TV he saw the channels airing the ATM kiosk attack and in the CCTV footage his face was clearly visible.  “I knew the police would search for me, so I went to a salon and got tonsured so that the police could not recognise me,” the chargesheet stated.

How Reddy hoodwinked police
The idea of getting the head shaved helped Reddy hoodwink the local police when they arrived in the lodge he was staying as part of the investigation. 

“I was sleeping in my room in the Common Bed Lodge in Hindupur at night when policemen came and asked me questions about why I was staying there. I had shaved my hair and the police could not recognise me. I told them that I was waiting for a bus to board the next day. The policemen went away. I left Hindupur and went back home to Madanapalli the next day,” Reddy stated.

Later he was arrested by the Andhra police and was taken to the custody of the city police in January 2017. He confessed before the police that he had come to Bengaluru two days before the attack and assaulted the woman at the ATM kiosk as he had no money.

Reddy, who hails from Mamallapuram village in Andhra Pradesh, allegedly escaped from prison in Kadapa in 2011 where he was to serve a life term after being convicted for murdering his cousin Anand Reddy by hurling two crude bombs at him.a