Hyderabad: Techie kills lover, stuffs her body in a suitcase

Hyderabad: The body of a 25-year-old woman, who had been reported missing, was found in a suitcase at Sooraram in Dundigal. RC Puram police have arrested the woman’s friend, who they believe throttled her to death at Airport Lodge hotel in Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.

Buddana Lavanya used to work as a software engineer in a company in Gachibowli and lived in LIG Colony in RC Puram. Sunil Kumar (25), a resident of Sundernagar in the Suraram area, was her classmate in college and the two were in a relationship.  

Sunil worked as a structural engineer in a company in Jubilee Hills. He told Lavanya’s parents that he had got a job in the Ford Company in Muscat and would take Lavanya with him and find her a well paid job there.

The parents of both had agreed to them getting engaged.

Accordingly, on April 4, Lavanya her family and Sunil went to RGI airport for a flight to Muscat. Three days later, Lavanya’s elder sister Geetha received a message from Lavanya’s phone number stating that she will return by noon.

Some time later, Geetha received another message saying she had reached KPHB and then Miyapur. After that, the mobile phone was switched off.

Lavanya’s father B. Srinivasa Rao lodged a missing person complaint at RC Puram police station on April 7, as Lavanya’s mobile was still switched off.

When they contacted Sunil on his mobile, he told them that he would reach the city the next day, and then he switched off his mobile phone.

During the investigation, the police collected technical evidence and traced Sunil to the city on Saturday evening.

When he was questioned, he confessed to killing Lavanya, according to the police.

Inspector P. Ramchandra Rao of the RC Puram police said, “They were in love and their engagement ceremony was fixed after their parents agreed. But Sunil only wanted to exploit her sexually, lied that he had met with an accident, and cancelled the engagement. As Lavanya was pressurising him to get married, he planned to kill her.”

Sunil created a fake offer letter from the Ford Company and an ID card and sent these to Lavanya’s parents, asking them to send her with him. He planned to tell her parents that she was killed while returning from Muscat. The inspector said that after Lavanya’s parents left the airport on April 4, he took a room on rent at Airport Lodge hotel in RGIA, telling Lavanya that he felt ill and they would fly to Muscat the next day.

On April 5, during the early hours, he throttled and murdered Lavanya. “The same day, he packed the body in a suitcase and took a cab to the Suraram area where he dumped the suitcase in a drainage pipe. He then sent messages to Lavanya’s sister Geetha that he had been kidnapped by some unidentified persons and later sent another message from a new number that he had been killed and his body dumped at Suraram. He escaped to Nagpur,” said the inspector.

Based on his confession, the body was recovered late on Saturday night and was handed over to her family members after autopsy at the Gandhi Hospital mortuary.

Sunil was arrested and remanded to judicial custody, said inspector Ramchandra Rao.