Nearly nineteen years after the tragic rape and murder of B Pharmacy student Ayesha Meera in Vijayawada, a CBI Court has instructed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to return her remains to her family for the final rites. The court specified that the last rites should align with religious customs in Tenali on February 27 and mandated the government to facilitate and secure the proceedings. Additionally, the court mandated that the entire process be video recorded in the presence of government officials.
The CBI Court accepted the final report submitted by the CBI, which included conducting two postmortem examinations on the victim’s body as part of their investigation into the case. The CBI had entrusted the remains to the court following consultations with forensic experts from the government-run Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad. Ayesha’s parents, Shamshad Begum and Syed Iqbal, had petitioned the CBI court to release her remains to them, which the court granted by issuing directives to the CBI.
In December 2007, Ayesha, aged 17, was discovered murdered in her hostel bathroom in Ibrahimpatnam near Vijayawada. Subsequently, Pidathala Satyam Babu was arrested by the police nine months later. Although the women’s sessions court convicted him and sentenced him to life in 2010, the high court acquitted him in 2017 due to insufficient evidence after his appeal. After public interest litigations and a plea from her parents, the case was transferred to the CBI in 2018. Despite these efforts, the mystery surrounding Ayesha Meera’s murder has persisted for nearly two decades.
