Hyderabad: A deeply distressing case has exposed severe lapses in police coordination. A 75-year-old woman who went missing near Osmania Hospital was found dead three days later in the hospital’s mortuary—unidentified and unclaimed.
Venkata Narsamma, a native of Utlapally village in Nalgonda district, came to Hyderabad with her elder son, Krishna Redd,y for kidney and heart treatment. She stayed with him and her younger son, Buchireddy, at Osmania General Hospital. On August 10, around 7:45 a.m., while Buchireddy stepped out for breakfast, Narsamma left the hospital without informing anyone, planning to return to her village.
By the time Buchireddy returned five minutes later, she was missing. He immediately approached the Afzalgunj police at 8 a.m. Officers, however, delayed filing a complaint and checking CCTV footage. They initiated video review nearly eight hours later, by which time Narsamma had wandered far from the area.
For six days, the family searched across the city with police support. CCTV footage showed her walking through Koti and Dilsukhnagar. On August 13, around 2 a.m., a vehicle fatally struck her near LB Nagar crossroads. LB Nagar police registered the case as an unidentified death and shifted the body to the Osmania mortuary.
Meanwhile, her family kept searching the city and even the hospital premises, unaware that her body lay in the same hospital where her son was under treatment. Poor coordination between Afzalgunj and LB Nagar police, working under different commissionerates, delayed the identification.
On August 16, Afzalgunj police circulated missing person photos to nearby stations. Only then did the LB Nagar police match the photo with the body. Family members, still waiting at Osmania Hospital, were called to the mortuary. Buchireddy broke down on seeing the body, saying he had searched everywhere while she remained unidentified nearby.
Criticism has mounted over police negligence and poor use of technology. Despite having CCTV infrastructure and inter-commissionerate systems, coordination failed. Outrage has followed, with many questioning why police delayed reviewing CCTV footage after the complaint.
Police also failed to alert adjacent jurisdictions about the unidentified death, a standard procedure in such cases. Observers said a timely alert might have saved her life or at least confirmed her death sooner.
