After a week on the run, Bengaluru youth who attacked 5 people in Indiranagar arrested

The police had formed four teams to track down the history-sheeter accused in a series of five slashings on the intervening night of February 8 and 9.

The suspect has as many as six cases of robbery and assault registered against him in east Bengaluru. Kadamba has been involved in crimes since 2022 when he turned 18 with cases in Indiranagar and Ulsoor police limits, police sources said.

“On Saturday night, that is the night of February 8, in the Indiranagar police station limits of the east division of the Bengaluru city police, one rowdy… picked up a quarrel with a local person and has gone berserk and attacked three to four others and has caused bodily injuries with a sharp weapon. He has attacked randomly,” B Dayanand, Police Commissioner, Bengaluru, said earlier this week.

“The police have registered cases in this regard and all efforts are being made to find the accused… the DCP East is supervising this investigation,” he added.

In the series of five slashings in which Kadamba was involved in Indiranagar on February 8, he attacked two pani puri vendors, a security guard, a delivery agent, and a 19-year-old youth who refused to give him a ride after Kadamba forcibly sat on his scooter by brandishing a knife.

The series of incidents where victims were slashed on their necks or hands began at around 9.30 pm on Saturday night and culminated with the robbery of a scooter and a mobile phone from a delivery agent at around 2.30 am in the early hours of Sunday. Kadamba was allegedly inebriated and acting on his own, the police said.

Five separate FIRs have been registered by the Indiranagar police against Kadamba for the five incidents of random knife attacks.

“The suspect has been identified as Kadamba who is known in police records as a mobile phone thief and a drunkard. He is a resident of the Byappanahalli slum (near Indiranagar). We have launched a search for him. He was last seen in Hoskote (in rural Bengaluru),” D Devaraj, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru East Division, said after the incidents.

The news of the slashings spread like wildfire among the resident welfare groups in Indiranagar with some people suggesting the presence of a serial killer.

“The criminal’s modus operandi seems to be that he stops people randomly, and engages them in some conversation, he then slashes/stabs them in the neck when they are in a vulnerable position and runs away afterward,” said a social media message in one residents’ welfare group in Indiranagar.

Police sources said that the father of the youth was a history-sheeter in east Bengaluru while his elder brother Vishnu S has had six cases of robbery and assault against his name in various police stations in Bengaluru since 2018.

The family lived in the Binnamangala slum near Byappanahalli in east Bengaluru.

Among the cases registered against Kadamba in east Bengaluru are the robbery of a mobile phone in 2024, the robbery of a motorbike the same year, another bike robbery in 2023, and two separate cases of assault and a case of breaking into a house in 2022 where several members of his family – including mother, brother, and sister – are also accused.