Bengaluru: A teenager had been arrested on charges of murdering a techie who had originally been thought to have died in a fire that broke out at her rented apartment.
The 18-year-old boy apparently killed the 34-year-old software engineer after she rejected his sexual advances, as reported by Deccan Herald.
Sharmila D K, from Dakshina Kannada, was unmarried and lived in a two-bedroom flat at Sankalpa Nilaya in Subramanya Layout in Bengaluru. She worked at a prominent tech company in the city.
A fire was reported at her flat between 10.15 pm and 10.45 pm. Firefighters who doused the blaze found Sharmila’s charred body.
Preliminary probe pointed to a short circuit as the fire had broken out in the bedroom used by Sharmila’s roommate, who was away in her hometown in Assam since November 14, 2025.
However, one of Sharmila’s friends suspected foul play, and the Ramamurthy Nagar police opened a case of unnatural death.
While the body was sent for post-mortem, Scene Of Crime Officers (SOCO) and forensic analysts examined the flat and found no evidence linking the fire to a short circuit.
“Evidence pointed out that it was arson. The autopsy revealed that the woman died due to suffocation. This, along with technical evidence gathered during the probe, led us to arrest the suspect,” a police officer has been quoted as saying.
The police then got to know of Karnal Kurai, a PUC student and a neighbour of Sharmila. A native of Virajpet in Kodagu district, the PUC student allegedly sneaked into her flat through a sliding window around 9 pm and asked her to “cooperate sexually”.
When Sharmila resisted, Kurai, using all his might, tightly held her mouth and nose, rendering her unconscious. During the struggle, she sustained bleeding injuries, the police said.
Kurai then went to the vacant bedroom, gathered Sharmila’s clothes and other “incriminating material”, and set them on fire to destroy evidence before fleeing with her mobile phone.
Kurai, who is 18 years and 3 months old, lives with his single mother in Bengaluru.
Police arrested him from his house on Saturday and secured his custody for three days. Further investigations are underway, an officer said.
He has been booked under BNS sections 103(1) (punishment for murder), 64(2) (punishment for rape), 66 (punishment for causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender).
