Solving Crime | When police dissected Bengaluru PhD scholar’s scripted-like-a-movie murder of his girlfriend

A body and a missing-person complaint

On May 30, 2015, the body of a woman in her early 20s was found half-buried in an agricultural land near Gabbur Cross, on the outskirts of Hubballi city, by Zakir Hussain, a farmer.

A police officer who was part of the probe said the body was in a bad state as stray dogs had eaten parts of it, including the face. “Usually, farmers take these roads to go to their farms but as it was summer, not many were using the roads. Also, there was rainfall for a couple of days. The moment the Kasabapeth police received information, we passed it on to other police stations of the city,” he added.

However, there were no leads. As the police preserved the body waiting to check missing-person complaints filed in the region, Girimalla Biradar approached the Dharwad suburban police on June 11, 2015, stating his daughter was missing.

According to him, Arpitha Girimalla Biradar, 24, a native of Vijayapura and a student of the University of Agricultural Sciences, had been missing since October 29, 2015. Asked why the complaint was filed late, Giridhar said that his family initially did not want to approach the police.

Girimalla Biradar was asked to check the body. It was the locket of a gold chain on her body that helped him identify his daughter. “Her father had gifted a gold chain that carried a logo and the name of the shop where it was bought. Besides, the dress that Arpitha was wearing also became crucial in identifying the dead body. The police immediately booked a murder case,” a police officer said.

Arpitha’s mobile phone was not found where body had been or in the room where she had been staying with a friend.

Pandurang Rane (left), then Police Commissioner of Hubbali-Dharwad, and Maruti S Gullari (right), the inspector of the Kasabapeth police station.

Case hits a dead end

With no eyewitness or any leads, the Kasabapeth police began questioning Arpitha’s family members, friends, and classmates. Her call details records (CDR) did not provide any leads besides that she had often called a former classmate named Arun Shivalingappa Patil, who also hails from Vijayapura.

Arun, then 23 years old, was a gold medallist at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and a PhD scholar at Bengaluru’s University of Agricultural Sciences on its Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra campus.

Maruti S Gullari, who was the inspector of the Kasabapeth police station then, told indianexpress.com that Arun’s answers were satisfactory.

“I still remember, when we called him for questioning for the first time, we asked about where he was on May 28 to 30, 2015, and he told us he was in Bengaluru. The mobile location also showed the same. Upon checking college attendance, he was shown present in the college. Arun also said that Arpitha was his best friend but they did not have any relationship as such. He was consistent with his answers and we did not have any reason or evidence to suspect him at that point,” Gullari added.

“As the gold chain was available, we were aware that it was not a murder for gain. But as her mobile phone was destroyed, we had lost a good piece of evidence,” Gullari said.

But for the Hubbali-Dharwad police, what stuck as a major setback in pursuing the case was the assassination of M M Kalaburgi, a former vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi, in Dharwad on August 30, 2015.

A police officer said, “The Kalburgi killing became a high-profile case and a majority of the resources were pooled for the investigation. The Arpitha murder investigation took a brief hit. Also, the police needed to travel to Bengaluru to collect evidence if and when Arun involvement was in question.”

A killing inspired by crime thriller Drishya

For more than a year, Arun had appeared four times before the investigating team and his statements were consistent. Till then, Arpitha’s CDR were being analysed. Now the police started to analyse the calls of her close friends and family members.

Gullari said, “According to Arun, he was a good friend of Arpitha and always responded to her calls and messages. But what we noticed in analysing Arun’s calls was that from May 28, 2015, till the murder came to light, Arun had not received or called Arpitha and not responded to her messages.”

“It was quite intriguing because Arun usually never missed her calls. We decided to check Arun’s room in Bengaluru and it took him by surprise. We went to Bengaluru and upon checking his room, we found a diary where he had maintained the investigation details as well as how he has to respond to the police questions,” Gullari said.

“It became clear that Arun was involved in the murder. He was taken into custody and several medical tests were conducted to match the fingerprints and DNA that we had collected from Arpitha’s body,” Gullari added. Arun then had no choice but to confess before the police.

On October, 18, 2016, Pandurang Rane, then Hubbali-Dharwad police commissioner, announced Arun’s arrest and said that he was inspired by the Kannada crime thriller movie Drishya, released in 2014.

Narrating the crime, Rane said, “Arun had called Arpitha to meet him on October 29 in Dharwad. He had taken a government bus from Bengaluru to reach Dharwad. He had called her from a coin booth phone. Later, both of them around 4 pm went to the Unkal lake close to Hubballi and spent at least hours. Later, they took an autorickshaw to travel towards Gabbur Cross, close to NH-4. Around 7 pm, Arun used the dupatta Arpitha was wearing and killed her. He buried her body in the agricultural farm and left for Bengaluru on the same night.”

Rane said that Arun had planned the murder well and made notes of the investigation and what questions would be thrown at him.

Gullari said, “He had kept his mobile phone on silent mode in his room and had signed his attendance for October 29, 2015, a day earlier.”

Asked about the motive for the murder, Gullari said that Arun and Arpitha were in the same college for graduation and were in a love relationship. Arun went on to pursue PhD while Arpitha had a setback in academics. She put pressure on him to marry her and threatened to inform his family and police.

“He was an ambitious man who and he felt Arpitha to be a hurdle. As she started to blackmail him for marriage, he felt uncomfortable and decided to kill her,” said Gullari.

The police said Arun’s father was a principal in a first-grade government college and his brother an officer in the Army.

Present status

Arun, who was arrested, later came out on bail and the case is under trial.

Gullari, who was the investigating officer, said he had submitted all necessary evidence in court. “Among the recoveries that we produced, we found that there were finger rings carrying the initials A&A that both Arun and Arpitha were wearing,” he said.

Gullari, who now works in the crime branch of the Hubbali-Dharwad city police, said Arun was a highly talented man, pointing to the diary he had kept to track the investigations. “He invested a lot of time reading up and also analysing the situation,” the officer added.

“Arun had to drop his education after his arrest. He is attending court hearings,” said another police officer.

Panduranga Rane, who has retired, was appointed as chief traffic warden of Bengaluru city police in March.