Hyderabad: P Rajkumar, who is accused of killing six people, including his wife and two sons, had reportedly taken his sons out for a haircut and played cricket with them just hours before.
Rajkumar was booked under a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) case in May for allegedly harassing his 17-year-old neighbour. He was later released on bail. It is suspected that the case might be a motive behind the murders.
On Friday, July 10, Rajkumar was captured on Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) forcibly taking the 17-year-old girl into his car from Daivalaguda village of Rangareddy district, at around 11 pm.
According to the police, Rajkumar first entered the victim’s house and murdered her mother and grandmother before abducting the teenager. He is suspected of driving her to a lake located about three kilometres away, where he allegedly sexually assaulted her and slit her throat.
He then returned to his residence, where he allegedly murdered his wife and two young children.
Investigators believe the six murders took place within a span of nearly two hours, between 11 pm and 1 am. Before switching off his mobile phone, Rajkumar had called his father to inform him about the murders and said he was going to take his own life.
Relatives of Rajkumar’s wife, Parvathi Saritha, told Deccan Chronicle that the couple had a love marriage in 2018, despite belonging to different castes. They had two sons, aged three and two. Rajkumar was five years younger than Saritha.
The relatives alleged that since Rajkumar came into contact with the minor girl in 2024, he started threatening Saritha for a divorce.
Another relative said that Saritha had completed her BEd and recently qualified for the Teacher Eligibility Test. Meanwhile, Rajkumar had sold three acres of land, earning Rs 1.3 crore for each acre. He had also set up sheds to start a dairy farm, they said.
Rajkumar harassed the minor for one year: FIR
According to the first information report (FIR) registered at Shabad Police Station under the Future City Commissionerate, the 17-year-old girl’s mother alleged that 35-year-old Rajkumar had been harassing her daughter for the past year.
He would insist she speak to him on the phone and obstruct her whenever she travelled to her college in Shamshabad. He had even started threatening to kill the girl if she did not speak to him.
As a result, the complainant stopped her daughter from attending college and kept her at home for six months, the FIR states. Rajkumar’s house was right next to the complainant, and he had installed a CCTV to monitor the movements of the complainant’s family, the victim’s mother alleged.
On May 16, the complainant took her daughter to her college in Shamshabad for her intermediate first-year exam. As her daughter exited the college, Rajkumar allegedly grabbed her hand and tried to drag her away.
The complainant was able to save her daughter and approached the police the same day. A case was registered under sections 78 (stalking) and 351 (2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) read with section 12 (sexual harassment) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
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