Bengaluru: Ms. T was scrolling through Instagram while watching TV in her South Delhi apartment, when uncensored images flashed on her screen— mutilated body parts, a blood-soaked refrigerator, and the face of a young woman, Mahalakshmi. ‘Shraddha Walkar copycat killer,’ screamed the caption. Except—this was not Delhi but Bengaluru.
She quickly closed the app. Took deep breaths. Reminded herself that Mahalakshmi was not her daughter. Her daughter died in December 2023—murdered by her lover and live-in partner in Bengaluru.
“We never thought something so horrible would happen to our daughter in a safe city like Bengaluru,” said Ms. T, over the phone. It’s Delhi that has the reputation for being unsafe. The image she saw on Instagram was that of Mahalakshmi (29), whose dismembered body was discovered on 22 September 2024.
The high-profile murder of Shraddha Walkar in May 2022 by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala—who allegedly chopped the body, charred the face and stored the parts in a refrigerator—further cemented Delhi’s reputation. It’s one of the reasons why Ms. T wasn’t too anxious when her daughter got a job with an ed-tech company in Bengaluru in 2021.
There’s an uptick in murders involving love and betrayal in Bengaluru.
– a senior police official from Bengaluru’s Central Crime Branch
For decades, the jewel of the south, India’s Silicon Valley, and the garden city of India was seen as one of the safest places for young working women. It was ranked as the best Indian city to live in by a global survey. That was in 2011. Now, the police are worried. Bengaluru’s reputation has been taking a hit in the last three years. With a vibrant youth culture and fluid population of migrant professionals, the city is changing. Romances and live-in couples are triggering social anxieties and widening the gap between tradition and transformation.
“There’s an uptick in murders involving love and betrayal in Bengaluru,” said a senior police official from Bengaluru’s Central Crime Branch.
In the first eight months of this year alone, of the 702 reported murders in Karnataka, 23 victims were killed by their lovers, including live-in partners, according to data from the Bengaluru Crime Branch. In 2023, the state reported 41 murders by lovers, while 20 were killed in the previous year, according to the crime branch. Ever so often, politicians blame “Western values” and “working women” for this.
Mahalakshmi is the latest victim. Her dismembered body was discovered in the refrigerator last month after one of her neighbours reported foul smell from her flat. Her boyfriend fled to his hometown in Odisha where he died by suicide.
Ms. T’s daughter was suffocated by a pillow; the suspect—her live-in-partner—was arrested. The similarities between the two cases are uncanny. Both women were financially independent and in their 20s. They were not from Bengaluru. They did not want to take their relationships forward. But where Mahalakshmi’s case made national headlines as the ‘refrigerator horror’, the murder of Ms T’s daughter went unnoticed.
“These crimes aren’t about love or passion, but about toxic masculinity”
– Shannon Philip, assistant professor in gender and sexuality, University of Cambridge
“I was standing in the kitchen next to the water filter when the police called. It was the morning of 23 December 2023,” said Ms. T. Her daughter survived Delhi, to die in Bengaluru. The same year, a woman was beaten to death with a pressure cooker; another was stabbed at her college campus.
These crimes are driven by revenge, rejection, and resentment.
“Delhi is called the rape capital of India…but Delhi and Bengaluru are not that different when it comes to safety of young women. Gory crimes against women have been making their way into the social fabric of Bengaluru as well,” said Shannon Philip, assistant professor in gender and sexuality at University of Cambridge.
“These crimes aren’t about love or passion, but about toxic masculinity.”
Women on alert
At Koramangala, one of Bengaluru’s popular party hubs along with Indiranagar and Church Street, a group of women stand outside a well-known restobar, Gilly’s Redefined. Revellers around them move from one pub to another, sampling craft beer and burgers. A few kilometres away lies the paying guest accommodation where 24-year-old Kriti Kumari was murdered in July.
“After these incidents, I don’t trust anyone other than my close group of female friends. They make us reluctant to put our guard down with anyone, including those we think we know well,” said Abhirami Kumari, a 22-year-old college student from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. She moved to Bengaluru two years ago to pursue master’s in media studies.
Kriti was murdered by a close friend’s former lover, who blamed Kriti for their relationship souring. The civic authorities sprung into action, enforcing regulations. Owners and residents scrambled to install CCTV cameras. It was another rude awakening for the city.
But Abhirami and her friends aren’t impressed—these measures are fleeting at best, quickly forgotten until the next woman is raped or murdered. So, the women have built their own safety net–sharing location details with close friends and family members. It’s a well-rehearsed, choreographed action taken every time they step out at night or go on a date.
“I used to love every moment of living in this city. I have done everything alone. Movies, coffee, cafes, fancy restaurants, parks. But lately, there has been a lingering fear, especially while walking alone on streets at night,” said 30-year-old Ananya Kumari, who has lived in Bengaluru for 10 years and is now working as an HR manager in a marketing company. She was accompanying her sister Abhirami at the bar. “She feels safer with me,” Ananya said, pointing toward her sister, solely responsible for her as their parents live in Vijayawada.
Some women are also worried about meeting men on dating apps. Walkar and Poonawalla had met on Bumble.
“Every guy I have chatted and planned a date with has wanted to meet in my home or in theirs for the first date. Even men in their mid to late 30s keep suggesting this, and they often get weird when you say no. They get offended or hurt and take it personally,” said software developer Sneha (25) who lives in a PG in Koramangala. She recently uninstalled all the dating apps on her phone after hearing about crimes against women being committed by their live-in partners or boyfriends.
“It is scary how the person you trust the most has the potential to do something so gruesome. If I can’t trust the men I know, how can I trust random men on the internet?” she asked.
Also read: Masjids, migrants, mobility. Himachal is becoming a new anti-mosque hotspot
‘Western values’
In a corner of a two-bedroom house in South Bengaluru’s New Mico Layout hangs a framed picture of Vaishnav and Padmadevi from their college days. Her one hand is affectionately placed over Vaishnav’s shoulder. Both are smiling broadly. Theirs was a college romance that blossomed into a live-in relationship heading toward marriage. Three years after that photo was taken, Vaishnav was arrested in August last year for allegedly beating Padmadevi to death with a pressure cooker.
Vaishnav was from Kollam and Padmadevi from Thiruvananthapuram, but two years ago, they decided to move to Bengaluru for work and started living together.
“She told us that she was happy and in love. We are still in shock that this happened to her,” said Padmadevi’s brother-in-law Akhil, who also lives in New Mico Layout. The family was aware of the couple’s live-in status but had no inkling that Padmadevi was unhappy.
According to the police, the couple fought on a daily basis as neighbours would often complain. “My wife Krishna hasn’t been able to talk about it. Neither are we getting any updates from the police about the case. We have no answers,” Akhil said.
The police, while acknowledging the rise in such cases, put it down to couples moving into a live-in relationship “too quickly.” In police stations, such relationships are often called “illicit”. Crimes of passion, fits of rage are part of police parlance.
Police officials tend to have a patriarchal mindset while registering cases of live-in couple murders. They tend to shift the blame on the woman victim to escape filing a case. This allows the perpetrator to think they can get away.
– Gender activist Brinda Adige
“We are seeing a rise in these young couple murders that happen in a fit of a second due to rage. They get jealous or assume that their partner is cheating on them. It is also happening because couples are getting into live-in relationships without knowing the partner for too long,” said a senior police officer from the crime branch who handles murder investigations in the city.
This negative publicity has even brought politicians into the debate. BJP MP K Sudhakar and BJP MLC CT Ravi have stirred the pot by claiming that the “mindset” of educated and working women has “broadened too much” due to “Western values”.
“Unfortunately, today we are going in a Western way. We don’t want our parents to live with us, forget about grandparents being with us,” K Sudhakar said in 2021 while speaking about why young women don’t want to marry.
Gender activist Brinda Adige is worried that these “regressive” views could lead to calls for regulation of live-in relationships. Through the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Act 2024, Uttarakhand has shown how this could be done. Such ‘Big Brother’ methods will not help, said Adige.
“Police officials tend to have a patriarchal mindset while registering cases of live-in couple murders. They tend to shift the blame on the woman victim to escape filing a case. This allows the perpetrator to think they can get away,” said Adige, who has assisted families of women victims in filing cases against the perpetrators.
She also pointed out that similar crimes also occur between married couples. “But they often go unnoticed because they are carried out under the cover of ‘respectable social institutions’,” she added, urging the state government to instead make the justice process hassle-free for the families of victims.
Couples choosing to live together instead of marrying have to battle families, society and cultural norms. Often, this results in social isolation from family members, explained Bengaluru-based psychologist Shalini Ananth. This makes them more vulnerable to abuse.
Ms. T was not happy about her daughter’s decision to move in with her boyfriend. “We had objected because it is not in our family culture. But she didn’t listen to us. Eventually she cut off all contact with the family,” she said.
‘Passion killings’
Two years ago, when Goa-based journalist Gerard De Souza was researching for his book Crimes of Passion: When Desire Turns Deadly (2023), he was hard-pressed to find a crime in Bengaluru that would fit his parameters. He profiled the Neeraj Grover-Maria Susairaj case from Mumbai, the Priyadarshini Mattoo-Santosh Kumar Singh case from Delhi, and the Samson D’Souza-Scarlet Keeling case from Goa. He wanted 11 darkest crimes of passion that India saw in 20 years. There was none from Bengaluru.
“During my research [in 2020-21], I couldn’t find any recent examples of such crimes in Bengaluru. Today, a simple Google search will throw up so many more instances of murders motivated by ‘passion’,” De Souza said. He attributed the rise to men failing to “digest the fact” that women today put their careers before marriage, are aware of their own agency, and are unwilling to be “controlled”.
In most of these cases, men were unable to accept rejection or the fact that marriage was not a priority for the woman. It’s why Kalyan (23) stabbed 19-year-old Layasmitha within the campus grounds of Presidency College in January 2023. They weren’t in a live-in relationship;police said he was stalking her. Like with the PG murder, there was outrage. The authorities responded swiftly, CCTVs were installed, and the college was booked for inadequate security.
And like Ms. T, Layasmitha’s family in Mulbagal taluk in Kolar cannot understand how something so violent could happen to their daughter in a city like Bengaluru.
“We sent Layasmitha to Bengaluru as it is a reputed and modern city. We thought she would be safe here. We never thought something like this could happen to her, that too in a university in the heart of the city,” her uncle Rajakumar said.
Also read: Kashmiri Sikhs ask how to stop losing daughters to Islam— ‘It’s a threat to demography’
Murder and morality
For the Bengaluru police, the changing nature of murders – especially the ‘fridge murder case’ – came as a jolt.
Mahalakshmi, who was from Nepal, lived alone in a 1 BHK flat in a three-storeyed building in Malleshwaram, in a fairly busy street in Central Bengaluru. Her neighbours described her as a quiet woman who left her house daily for a 9-5 job at a mall and stayed home during the weekend. There were no causes for alarm. Until a strange stench from the house caught their attention.
At the crime scene, there was a sense of unease among the police as well.
“I cannot describe what I saw because it was so gory. I have never seen anything like this in my policing service for over a decade,” said an officer.
The case has put the spotlight on couples in live-in relationships and, as Adige and Philip pointed out repeatedly, the murder is being conflated with morality. As if married women are somehow safer.
In a quiet corner of Matteo, a cafe outside MG Road metro station, Chinmay Kothari and Nandhini Raju, both 27, are tapping away at their laptops. The couple, living together in a 2 BHK independent house in HSR Layout for three years, wanted a change of scenery.
“We are so happy right now,” said Nandhini, who works for a startup. For the most part, they describe living together as bliss. But since Mahalakshmi’s murder, Nandhini has been fielding calls from her family.
“My mom, who lives in Chennai, constantly asks me if I trust him (Chinmay) enough to keep living with him. She keeps forwarding me news articles about live-in couple murders,” Nandhini said.
In their neighbourhood, they sense an unease that didn’t exist before.
“Our landlord was initially not judgemental about giving a house to an unmarried couple. But lately, he has been calling to ask us when we will get married,” said Chinmay.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)