Facebook friendship leads to suicide, murder in Telangana

Hyderabad: In a bizarre chain of events, hours after a woman committed suicide at her home, a youngster whom the woman alleged to be responsible for her suicide, was found murdered. While the woman who committed suicide, Sudha, hanged herself at her home in Mahabubnagar on February 28 in the morning, hours later, her alleged perpetrator Kartheek’s decomposed body was found in Gadwala. While their common friend Ravi is suspected to have killed Kartheek, Sudha had left a suicide note blaming Kartheek for harassing her and forcing her to take the extreme step. It was also found that before hanging herself, she had called her father over the phone and informed him that she has not done any mistake and they should forgive her. She also allegedly informed him that she is going to commit suicide and requested him to take care of her son. Police are now probing if Sudha had any role in Kartheek’s murder.

According to sources, Kartheek and Sudha were classmates while pursuing graduation, during which Kartheek proposed to Sudha many times. However, Sudha had refused his advances then. After graduation, she got married to another person and they were residing in Mahabubnagar town. The couple has a child also.

Meanwhile, a year ago, Sudha received a friend request from Kartheek over Facebook. Though she was not in touch with him after college, she immediately accepted the friend request. Since then, they began to have regular conversations on Facebook and became close friends again. Gradually, Kartheek started taking advantage of her being close to him and took money from her. Later, he started demanding sexual favours from her. After some time, when she stopped giving in to his demands, he started blackmailing her, saying that he will inform her husband about their relationship and will upload her morphed pictures on social media platforms.

As days passed, his harassment increased and unable to bear it, she informed about this to a common friend, Ravi. It was learnt that Ravi also collected money from her. Even in the suicide note she mentioned that she had informed Ravi anna about the harassment from Kartheek.

Following this, Kartheek went missing three days back and his parents lodged a missing complaint. Police are now in the process of connecting the chain of events that led to the murder and suicide.