Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Jan 26: A chilling incident in Ramamurthy Nagar has come to light where a student was arrested for the murder of a female techie after a failed rape attempt. The truth emerged during the interrogation of the accused, an 18-year-old student named Karnal.
The victim, 34-year-old Sharmila, originally from Mangaluru, lived in an apartment where the accused was her neighbour. Initially, Karnal denied the allegations of sexual assault, but after intense questioning, he confessed to the crime, claiming he was "in love" with her.
Stalking and premeditation
Karnal had been monitoring Sharmila’s movements for a month. He followed her to work and waited for her return. On the night of January 3, noticing her roommate was away, he entered her flat through a sliding window.
When he attempted to assault her, Sharmila screamed for help. In a desperate bid to silence her, he smothered her and eventually set her on fire using tissue paper. He then fled through the balcony, stealing her mobile phone.
How the investigation unfolded
Initially, the fire was suspected to be a short circuit, but FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) teams found no evidence of an electrical fault.
The post-mortem revealed that Sharmila died of suffocation before the fire started. Suspicion turned to Karnal when police noticed the sliding window was open and Sharmila’s phone was missing.
Investigators tracked the mobile phone and noticed Karnal had disappeared from his home following the incident. After being apprehended, the high school topper—who had dropped out of PUC—confessed. He had intended to make the murder look like an accidental fire to cover his tracks.
The quiet corridors of an apartment complex in Ramamurthy Nagar masked a predatory obsession that ended in a calculated nightmare.
Sharmila, a 34-year-old software professional, lived a life of routine, unaware that her 18-year-old neighbour, Karnal, had spent an entire month transforming her daily schedule into a blueprint for a crime.
A former academic topper turned dropout, Karnal’s infatuation took a dark, lethal turn on the night of January 3.
Capitalising on the absence of Sharmila’s roommate, the teenager breached the sanctity of her home through a sliding window. What began as a horrific attempt at sexual assault quickly escalated when Sharmila fought back. To silence her screams, Karnal used brute force to suffocate her.
In a cold-blooded attempt to erase his presence, he piled tissue paper on her body and ignited a fire, hoping the world would blame a faulty wire for the charred remains left behind.
The "perfect crime" unravelled through the very tech Sharmila worked with. Forensic experts quickly ruled out a short circuit, and the autopsy confirmed she had stopped breathing long before the flames reached her. The final nail in the coffin was Sharmila’s missing smartphone, which police traced directly to the fleeing teenager.
What Karnal tried to frame as a tragic accident was revealed to be a scripted act of violence, proving that the most dangerous stranger is sometimes the one living right across the hall.