The accused Sai Krishna killed the victim and dumped her body in a manhole because she was forcing him to leave his wife and marry her.
The 36-year-old temple priest-cum-contractor in Hyderabad, who brutally murdered his 30-year-old “girlfriend”, used Google to search for ways to murder someone, according to his remand report, which South First has accessed.
Ayyagari Venkat Surya Sai Krishna — an MBA graduate — stands accused of murdering on 4 June, a woman with whom he had allegedly been having an extramarital affair.
Sai Krishna confessed on Friday, 9 June, that he had murdered Kuruganti Apsara and later dumped her body in a manhole because she was pressuring him to leave his family and marry her.
In his initial testimony to the Cyberabad police, he also claimed that Apsara had been pregnant with his child and had an abortion in March.
In his remand report, accessed by South First, it has been mentioned that used Google a week before killing Apsara to research ways to murder someone.
The victim Kuruganti Apsara was killed by Sai Krishna
“…..In the month of March 2023, (Apsara) asked him to marry her and to spend time with him, and also sent a proposal through WhatsApp. Later, she blackmailed him, saying that if he failed to marry her, she would blame him and defame him,” the remand reports read.
“He (Sai Krishna) was vexed with the behaviour of Apsara as he was already married and also had respect in society,” it added.
About a week before the crime, he searched “How to kill a human being” on Google, the report added.
As per the cops, Apsara was a native of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and used to live in Chennai before separating from her husband, who died by suicide.
She went back to living with her family in Saroornagar in April 2022.
Sai Krishna was a priest at the Bangaru Miasamma Temple in Saroornagar.
After shifting to the neighbourhood, Apsara used to visit the temple daily. Gradually, she became friends with Sai Krishna, fell in love and entered into a relationship.
The remand report added that both of them, along with their friends, even visited the Somnath and Dwarka temples in Gujarat.
According to the Cyberabad police, Sai Krishna could not execute the murder ideas he researched on Google.
“There are thousands of such websites on the internet with methods on how to commit a murder. He took the help of the internet, but could not apply anything he learnt, due to which he had to stick to the usual ways of killing a person. With all the CCTV footage and technology available these days, it would not have worked anyway,” Station House Officer (SHO) of the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) Police Station in Shamshabad, R Srinivas, told South First.
Sai Krishna initially tried to kill Apsara by pressing her face against his car’s tarpaulin cover sheet. However, when she resisted, he repeatedly smashed her head with a stone he had kept in his car, said the cops.
Apsara’s mother told reporters, “I need justice and that should be hanging him. We never thought he would turn out to be a criminal. How can someone kill someone else’s daughter?
“After he told me, he dropped Apsara off for Bhadrachalam with her friends, I asked him why didn’t he call me when she was getting in a friend’s car as the plan was to go by bus. He kept saying he forgot to call. When the police saw the CCTV footage and found that Apsara was not there, they suspected he only did something,” she added.
The accused priest, Ayyagari Venkat Surya Sai Krishna. (Twitter)
Sai Krishna’s father Narsimha Murthy told reporters, “He told the police that Apsara was harassing him for three months, pressuring him. She said either he would marry her or she would die by suicide and write a note blaming him.”
He added that if his son had told him all of this much earlier, they would have approached the police or had Apsara counselled.
Denying any knowledge of their relationship, Murthy said, “I had seen her at the temple once or twice. She used to address my son as ‘Anna’ [elder brother]. Why would I even think there was a relationship when she called him Anna?”
Although he acknowledged that what his son did was wrong, he added, “If the girl’s mother is giving any statements about my son, then was it not her responsibility to keep her daughter in line?”
He added: “Why didn’t the mother stop Apsara from meeting my son, knowing full well that he was married and we are priests?”
Sai Krishna’s wife told reporters, “I don’t believe he did this. Maybe what happened was accidental, but I can’t believe he did it deliberately. Maybe when they were in the car she forced him or something like that. Maybe he hit her with some object in a fit of anger.”
She added, “I knew he was a social person as he spoke with everyone, not only Apsara. He is a people person. But I’m sure there was no relation between them.”
She continued: “My husband is not like that. He never shared about the harassment she was subjecting him to with me. There was no change in his behaviour in recent days. We can’t say if she was pregnant with his child or someone’s.”
Sai Krishna’s wife recollected that he once told her Apsara had some disease, due to which she fell unconscious and he took her to the hospital and got some scans done. But he would have helped anyone in that place, she said.
Kuruganti Apsara. (Twitter)
According to the police, Krishna picked up Apsara from her home at around 8.15 pm on 3 June under the pretext of taking her to Coimbatore and initially took her to the Narkhoda village in Shamshabad.
“As the deceased started feeling ill and sleepy, the accused took her to his cow shelter in Sultanpura. Around 4 am, the accused tried to kill her,” the cops said.
He kept the body in his car for the time being.
After killing the victim, Krishna went to her house on 5 June and took her mother Aruna to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) Police Station in Shamshabad.
The cops said that Krishna lodged a “false complaint” claiming that his “niece” Apsara, whom he had dropped off at the Ambedkar statue near the Shamshabad bus stand — as she was going to Bhadrachalam — was missing and her phone was also switched off.
After registering the missing complaint on 5 June, Krishna noticed a foul smell coming from the body in his car that evening and dumped it in a manhole behind the Sub-Registrar Office (SRO) in Saroornagar.
The cops said on the morning of 6 June, Krishna brought two truckloads of red soil and covered the manhole. He also burnt her hand and luggage bag in an effort to get rid of the smell and washed his car as well.
The next day, he again visited the SRO. When he understood that the foul odour had not gone away, Sai Krishna got the manhole covered with cement concrete.
Meanwhile, the cops questioned the victim’s mother. After scanning footage from CCTV cameras, they found her version of events contradicting those of the accused Sai Krishna.
They discovered that Krishna had dumped the body in a manhole behind the SRO, covered it up with red soil and fabricated a story about his missing “niece”.
At 7 am on 9 June, the RGIA Shamshabad cops brought in Krishna for interrogation, and he confessed to the crime.
He was remanded in judicial custody on Saturday and is currently lodged in the Cherlapally jail.
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