Hours after 58-year-old Srikanth and 55-year-old Anuradha returned from the USA to their home in Chennai on Saturday, May 7, the couple was found brutally murdered, with the police finding their bodies at their farmhouse near the East Coast Road (ECR). Their house in the city was also robbed. Upon investigation, it was found that the culprit behind the crime was a man named Krishna, who had worked for the couple as a driver for over 10 years.
The couple had left for the USA in November last year, and apart from one short visit that Srikanth made, they were away until Saturday, May 7. According to the police, Krishna had been working as a live-in driver for them. On the day of their return, Krishna had picked up Anuradha and Srikanth from the airport, and drove them to their home in Chennai’s Mylapore.
The couple’s daughter — who lived in the USA — first found something amiss when she tried to call her parents repeatedly when they landed. But when she received no response, she alerted a relative, who rushed to the house and found it locked. This is when the police were called, who broke into the house and found some blood stains. The couple and Krishna were missing.
“According to the confession of the accused (Krishna and his associate Ravi), they hit the couple on the heads with a blunt object, like a log. They were killed in separate rooms and wrapped in bedsheets from the house, before they were moved,” ACP South R Kannan told the press.
According to the Hindu, Krishna and Ravi cleaned up the blood stains and took the bodies to the couple’s farmhouse on the East Coast Road and buried them there. ACP Kannan told the press said that the murders were pre-planned.
The Times of India reported that the police attempted to trace Krishna and Ravi through phone details, and through their FASTag records found that he was traveling on the Chennai-Kolkata highway. They used CCTV footage and call logs, and alerted the police in Andhra Pradesh, who arrested the duo in Ongole.
The motive behind the brutal murder of the couple was money, police found. “Krishna was acquainted with his associate Ravi when he was attempting to get his son admitted to a school. Ravi helped him with that, and since then they have been friends. Krishna was aware of the inner workings of the household and has overhead details about a recent transaction the couple had made,” he said.
The duo believed that this transaction was worth about Rs 40 crore, and were awaiting an opportunity to steal it from Srikanth and Anuradha’s safe. But it was only after they killed the couple that they realised the money had been transferred out of their account.
Upon arrest, the police found eight kilos of gold and 50 kilos of silver that Krishna and Ravi had stolen from Srikanth and Anuradha. ACP Kannan added that the accused tried to flee the state with the stolen jewellery.
“The accused waited for the couple to return to the country as they needed the keys (to the safe). They seem to have discovered that there was no cash but this much jewellery only after the murder. We will know more details after further interrogations,” said Kannan.