The prime suspect was Nalla Biksham, the Reddys’ muscleman. But Biksham had an ironclad alibi: he was at a temple festival five villages away, captured on a grainy CCTV eating a jilebi .
“Then who?” Varma whispered.
That night, Varma didn’t raid the Reddys. He went to Muthyalu, the toddy climber—a frail, terrified old man with shaking hands. Varma sat next to him on the parched earth and said, “Muthyalu garu, you climb the tree every morning. You saw who tied the rope.” murder telugu movie real story
The police called it a suicide. The village elders agreed. Sashi was “troubled,” they whispered. He had been fighting the upper-caste landlords for access to the village pond. He had filed a case against the Reddys for grabbing government land. Shame had driven him to the rope. The prime suspect was Nalla Biksham, the Reddys’ muscleman
Frustrated, Varma did the one thing the village didn’t expect. He visited Sashi’s room. It was a leaking shed behind a tea stall. Inside, buried under a pile of law textbooks, he found a diary. The last page wasn’t a suicide note. It was a list of names and dates. And next to three names, Sashi had written one Telugu word: “Sakshi” (Witness). That night, Varma didn’t raid the Reddys
At dawn, Varma arrested Sub-Inspector Venkata Rao. Under pressure, Rao confessed: Sashi had threatened to expose the smuggling ring. Rao had called him to the tree under the guise of a “settlement.” With the help of the Sarpanch’s son and two constables, they had strangled the boy and made it look like a suicide.