Nallapu Ramya was murdered on a busy road in full public view in Andhra Pradesh's Guntur
A man who stalked and stabbed an engineering student in August last year in Andhra Pradesh has been sentenced to death in one of the fastest conviction and punishment in such cases.
The third-year engineering student, Nallapu Ramya, was stabbed to death by Kunchala Sasikrishna on a busy road in full public view in Andhra Pradesh's Guntur. People had walked by and no one had come to her help. She met him on Instagram six months before the incident.
A fast-track sessions court in Guntur, in its verdict on Friday, found Kunchala Sasikrishna guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy praised the verdict, calling it a "historic step" in the fight to end crime against women.
"I welcome the historic verdict given by the fast-track court in the student Ramya murder case. Congratulations to the Police Department for expeditiously completing the investigation into this case and working hard to bring the accused to justice," Mr Reddy tweeted.
The trial in the case started on December 31 last year. It ended in four months. The swift resolution of the case is being seen as a big boost to the state government's DISHA initiative, under which the police give their one-hundred per cent to fast-track cases and take them to conviction in crimes against women.
In this case, DNA results were for the first time given within two days and the police completed the chargesheet in a week.
The police had Kunchala Sasikrishna within 10 hours after the murder.
Data shows that in 2021, 92 per cent of cases filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences, or POCSO Act, were brought to a logical end within 61 days under the DISHA initiative, compared to 169 days in 2017.
The DISHA app for women's safety shows 1.24 crore downloads.