2013 Bengaluru ATM attack victim identifies her assailant

The woman was calm before she was taken for identification, but the moment she identified the assailant, panic writ large on her face, the official said.

Bengaluru, Mar 18: A woman, who survived a brutal attack on her at an ATM kiosk here more than three years ago, has identified her assailant during an identification parade at the Parapanna Agrahara central jail, near Bengaluru.

"Yes, she had been to Parapanna Agrahara central jail yesterday and she identified the assailant, Madhukar Reddy..," the woman's husband said. A jail official said the identification parade did not last an hour. The woman was calm before she was taken for identification, but the moment she identified the assailant, panic writ large on her face, the official said.

Madhukar Reddy, 43, who escaped from a hospital in Kadappa in 2011 while serving a life sentence for a murder and allegedly committed the ATM crime two years later, was arrested on February 4 in his native Chitoor District of Andhra Pradesh during a routine police operation to trace absconding criminals.

The police said during interrogation Reddy had confessed to the brutal assault on the woman, a bank official, inside the ATM kiosk on November 19, 2013 when she was repeatedly attacked with a machete, with the crime caught on CCTV.

The accused allegedly had also murdered two women in Andhra Pradesh and a sex worker in Hyderabad. The ATM incident triggered widespread outrage as the woman, an employee of Corporation Bank, was left paralysed on her right side following the attack, which brought to the fore safety issues with government directing banks to shutdown unguarded booths.