The SP ruled out strangers. He pointed at the school.

Nalgonda's superintendent of police, Sharath Chandra Pawar, told the press that students — not outsiders — are the accused in the murder of principal K. Roopa Reddy.

Roopa Reddy headed Nagarjuna Grammar Concept School at Kondamallepalli. She was found dead at her house on 12 August. Police say she was killed on the evening of 11 August. Public accounts put her age at 48. The school shut, then reopened.

For a week the investigation ran the usual lines: old offenders, a random attack, people around the house. Five special teams, about 40 personnel, led by the Devarakonda deputy superintendent. About 70 cameras across a 30-kilometre radius. More than 80 people questioned.

The turn, Pawar said, was a word. Roopa Reddy was on a call with her aunt. She said "Babu" before the phone went dead. She used that word for boys at the school. After the school reopened, police looked at students who had been absent. Two Class 10 boys — from Pulsing Thanda and Pilya Thanda, who had shared a hostel room — had started spending and staying out. They were taken into custody on Wednesday morning near Doniyala X Road, police said, while riding a motorcycle.

Police say the two are minors and will be produced before the Juvenile Justice Board. They are not named here. They will not be named.

The SP's account is this. Last month the principal caught cash and a phone in a hostel bag, reprimanded one boy in front of his parents, and made him a day scholar. Police call that the grudge. They say the two then planned a theft because 11 August was a fee-collection day, watched the cameras around the house, and went there after school. One boy stayed outside as a lookout. The other went in. When she recognised him, officers say, he attacked her. They later seized ₹1.54 lakh, an iPhone, her phone, a knife, gloves and masks. Some notes, they say, carried human blood. One public account of the same briefing also mentioned about ₹2.50 lakh taken from the house; the seized cash the SP put on the table is ₹1.54 lakh.

That is the police story on Wednesday and Thursday. It is not a trial. A confession to police is not a judgment. Two children as the accused in a principal's murder is already a civic wound large enough without a street documentary of the rooms.

One Telugu desk framed a friend kept on watch outside. That matches the lookout in Pawar's briefing. The point for this cutting is not the gore and not a reconstructed night. It is the superintendent saying the accused sat in her own school.

A hostel reprimand is not a licence to kill. A fee day is not a vault. If the Juvenile Board holds the police story, Nalgonda has to ask how two Class 10 boys planned a theft for five days and the adults around them saw only money being spent. If the story fails, the SP has pointed at the wrong room. Either way, the public fact as of 20 August is the one Pawar spoke: students, not outsiders.

The husband was questioned as part of the same inquiry, police said, while they tested the circumstances. Five teams and 70 cameras are what a district does when a principal is killed at home. Naming two minors as the accused is what a district must do carefully. This desk will not print their names, their faces, or a blow-by-blow of the house. The SP has already said enough: the school is inside the case.