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“There is no immediate threat to the community and no arrests have been made,” she said.
But the deputy commissioner of police for the Indian zone where the man allegedly visited on the weekend said her officers were yet to receive any call from Australia.
“This happened in Australia,” Padmaja Reddy told this masthead. “We have not arrested [any person] and we have not received any petitions from anybody.”
Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would need to request the Indian government to seek an arrest, but only after Victoria Police had put forward a case for extradition, which had not yet happened. Dreyfus also had the power to seek a provisional arrest through India’s Interpol channels.
The case of Puneet Puneet, the alleged hit-run killer of university student Dean Hoftsee in 2008, highlighted the difficulty of obtaining extradition orders, even in friendly nations. Puneet remains in India, using legal channels to avoid being sent to Australia for sentencing.
A wheelie bin at the crime scene.Credit: Nine News
The United States’ efforts to extradite Australian citizen abroad, Julian Assange, have also been tangled for years in legal complexities.
The investigation of Madhagani’s death, however, is in its early stages and it was not believed Victoria Police had put anything forward.
The police media unit said questions about requests for Indian assistance were for the federal attorney-general, whose media unit declined to comment “as a matter of long-standing practice”.
Bandari, a member of the legislative assembly for the Uppal district in Hyderabad, said the couple’s child was taken to hospital for checks but was physically unharmed. The family did not know where the man went, he said.
Neither Victoria Police nor the federal Home Affairs Department have responded to rumours circulating in Hyderabad on Monday night that he might have returned to Australia.
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The close-knit Telugu-speaking community in Melbourne’s west has been devastated by the news of Madhagani’s death.
“She was lovely, she was a great neighbour,” a friend said. “She was talking about making a WhatsApp group for the neighbourhood so we can keep in touch. She was just a lovely person, very outgoing, very friendly.”
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