A lethal dose of silence

On a blistering Sunday afternoon on March 23, sixty-year-old farmer Ranga Rao received a call from his daughter Devi (name changed). She asked him where he was and if he had had his lunch. Ranga Rao told her he was busy feeding the buffaloes and would have it afterwards. A few moments of silence later, Devi disconnected the call.

For Rao and his wife Ananta Lakshmi, their daughter was everything. Born to them 12 years into their marriage, she was the anchor of their existence. Bright and affectionate, Devi was pursuing Pharm D. (Doctor of Pharmacy), a six-year course comprising five years of academic study and a year of internship, at a private college in Rajamahendravaram, 90 km from her village in a tribal pocket in the Eluru district; she was just a month away from completing her course. But, it was not to be.

Five hours after that call ended, Devi allegedly self-administered a powerful anaesthetic in an attempt to end her life while on duty at KIMS-Bollineni Hospital in Rajamahendravaram, where she was interning as a clinical pharmacist. Eleven days of struggle later, she was dead.

A suicide note believed to have been written by the 24-year-old narrates an insidious tale of exploitation, manipulation and torture that she suffered silently until it was too much.

Bolt from the blue

“She wanted to be a software engineer but respected my wish to see her as a doctor or a pharmacist,” says Rao, sitting in his crumbling cattle shed and staring at an old moped gathering dust in a corner. On it, he used to pick up Devi from the bus station nine kilometres away whenever she returned home on short vacations over the past six years. He hasn’t touched it since her death.

Ranga Rao and Sita Lakshmi, who belong to a backward class community, migrated to the tribal pocket in Eluru district from Chintoor Agency in Alluri Sitarama Raju district after their wedding. The family had some ancestral land in Chintoor Agency, which Ranga Rao hoped would offer a financial safety net for the family.

When Devi was pursuing her Intermediate, however, the entire ancestral property, which fell in the submergence area of Polavaram Irrigation Project, was taken over by the government—the compensation was ₹7 lakh. Another parcel of the family’s land in the Eluru village, too, was acquired for the right main canal of the project around the same time. More recently, half of the family’s six-cent house site was earmarked for demolition to make way for National Highway 365BB, a greenfield highway connecting Andhra Pradesh with Telangana.

The couple spent all the compensation and an additional ₹5 lakh for Devi’s Pharm D education. “We cultivated whatever land was left and we have two buffaloes. We managed to make ends meet and waited for Devi’s arrival with the degree. She promised she would return to us in April,” says Ranga Rao, grief choking his voice. The couple recalled how Devi spent two days with them during her last visit to the village in February.

A call, a revelation

At 6.06 p.m. that day, Devi’s paternal uncle, N. Narasimha Rao, received a call from her number. On the other end, however, was a gentle male voice, which they would later recognise as that of Duvvada Madhava Rao Deepak, a 37-year-old assistant general manager at the hospital. A native of Srikakulam district, Deepak is settled in Rajamahendravaram and is married.

Deepak told Narasimha Rao that Devi had fallen unconscious in the hospital and was being treated, a line that he repeated to Devi’s maternal uncle A. Bangarraju as well. “Devi’s blood level has dropped. She is unconscious; rush here as early as possible,” he had told them.

The next day, Devi’s parents and relatives were received by Deepak at the hospital. Suspecting something amiss, her family searched room 802 in the general ward, which she had reportedly used that day and is close to Deepak’s cabin. There, they found a diary. By then, Deepak had handed over Devi’s mobile phone and bag to her parents, but the device’s memory had been wiped clean.

Out leapt a wail

Buried among work notes in the diary was a five-page suicide letter written purportedly by Devi in Telugu. “I faced extreme physical torture and verbal abuse. I have no more strength to left … He harassed me both physically and sexually; he exploited me by promising to marry me. I never shared this with anyone. That’s my mistake”.

Devi says that she was sexually used and warned of dire consequences if she revealed it to anyone. “I have taken this decision [attempt to end her life] after suffering a lot within … Death is the only way ahead, but I do not wish to die,” she says in the note.

After reading the diary, Devi’s family members visited Deepak’s office, where they claim to have found a large refrigerator half filled with chocolates of various brands. “A belt was also found in his room,” says Bangararaju.

Bangararaju added that his wife Lahari, a software engineer, succeeded in retrieving four selfies from Devi’s mobile phone. Case diary (Cr. No. 54/2025, March 26), signed by Prakash Nagar Circle Inspector and investigating officer Sk. Baji Lal, states: “The CI has examined the photos on Devi’s cell phone and found that one photo showed the victim while [the] other three photos showed injuries and marks on her back [back of her neck].“

The Hindu got access to the four selfies. In one photo, a circular injury mark is seen; another shows the injury mark in the process of healing.

How it all began

According to police, Deepak met Devi for the first time at the wedding of a staff of KIMS-Bollineni Hospital about a year ago. Upon learning that she was interning at the hospital, he offered her help to find an accommodation, which she accepted.

In July 2024, she moved to a room she found through Deepak’s help. She shared it with four other girls working in various departments of the hospital. This rented room had been partitioned by the apartment’s owner. The five girls stayed in one portion, and the other portion was Deepak’s temporary office.

The remand report submitted by the investigation officer to the court, a copy of which is with The Hindu, states that six months ago, the accused (Deepak) found Devi alone in the room and raped her. Later, he promised to marry her and convinced her not to reveal the incident to anyone. Since then, he sexually exploited her repeatedly.

When she began to insist on marriage, the accused slapped her multiple times in the first week of March, reads the report.

Room 802

On March 23, Devi and Deepak had a heated argument over the phone about her demand for marriage. “In the CCTV camera footage of the hospital, the victim is seen with the drug capsule near the washroom in the ward [room 802]. However, there is no evidence or CCTV camera footage available on whether she administered the drug herself or somebody else administered the drug to her. It is yet to be investigated and established,” said investigation officer Sk. Baji Lal.

Some of the CCTV cameras in and around room 802, where Devi reportedly collapsed after administering the drug, had stopped functioning six months ago, according to Baji Lal. This was admitted by KIMS-Bollineni Hospital medical superintendent Atukuri Manikanta Chowdary.

An empty vial of the drug, reportedly used by the victim, was found by a staff in a corner of the general ward. It has been established that it was procured by the hospital. “Being a clinical pharmacist, the victim accessed the drug from our hospital store,” says Manikanta Chowdary.

The police noted the absence of the CCTV camera surveillance in some locations at the scene of the incident. Being a Sunday, the victim was attached to three Intensive Care Unit pharmacies on different floors of the hospital, says the police.

Case and protest

On March 24, the Prakash Nagar police booked Deepak on the charges of criminal intimidation (Section 351 (2) of the BNS and sexual harassment (Section75). Amid protests across the Rajamahendravaram and after the victim’s father submitted her diary and the cell phone, however, the police altered the case the next day by including the charges of rape and stalking. He was arrested on March 26.

Within one week of the incident, Devi was close being brain dead and was put on ventilator. “The victim’s health condition did not support shifting her to any other hospital. Multiple organs, including her liver, were affected,” says P.V.V. Satyanarayana, head of the department of general medicine at Government General Hospital (GGH-Rajamahendravaram). He had led the team of doctors who monitored the victim’s health while she was undergoing treatment at KIMS-Bollineni Hospital.

In the early hours of April 4, the victim breathed her last. A post-mortem examination was performed at the GGH the same day. The next day, her last rites were performed in her village. “We are waiting for the autopsy report,” says Baji Lal.

As investigation progresses and Devi turns into a memory for her dear ones, a poignant sentence scribbled at the foot of the suicide letter sums up her despair: “Never wanted to be born again [sic]”

(Those in distress can dial 14416 Tele MANAS for help)