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On December 2, constable Kongara Nagamani was on the way to her workplace, the Hayathnagar police station in Hyderabad, to attend a meeting at 9 am.

Nagamani, 27, was riding her bike when her husband called to check on her. Although they had known each other for 10 years, having studied in the same high school, the two had been married for just three weeks.

“The call lasted 25 seconds,” her husband, Bandari Srikkanth recalled. “For the first 10 seconds, she spoke normally but suddenly she said ‘My brother has come to kill me’ and then the call got cut.”

At the police station, when Nagamani did not turn up for the meeting, her colleagues wondered what had happened. Ten minutes later, they received a phone call informing them that she had been murdered. Later that day, Nagamani’s brother, Pramesh, surrendered, and according to the police, confessed to the murder.

The daylight killing of a police constable has left many, including Nagamani’s colleagues, shaken. A police constable said, “We assumed that people would be scared of attacking a policewoman.” Another added: “I think the public is a bit on an edge. They are wondering how the police will protect them if we cannot protect ourselves.”

But a policewoman who sat...