Solving Crime | How a rejected proposal led to a 4-year conspiracy and a brutal acid attack

But what investigators eventually uncovered was not a crime borne out of a moment of rage. According to the police, the attack was the culmination of a meticulously planned conspiracy that had unfolded over four years – one that allegedly began with a man’s plan to isolate Sumana, destroy her marriage and ultimately force her to marry him. More than a decade later, while Sumana continues to undergo reconstructive surgeries, investigators still describe the case as one of the most calculated conspiracies they have handled.

The first suspect

The investigation initially centred on Sumana’s ex-husband, Ramesh, 45. The couple had divorced the previous year (2014) after over six years of marriage and shared a five-year-old son.

Former investigating officer Sudhir Hegde, now deputy superintendent of police with the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission, said multiple teams were deployed immediately after the attack. While one secured the crime scene and another accompanied Sumana to the hospital, Hegde led a team to Ramesh’s house.

“When we reached, he wasn’t home. Naturally, our suspicion increased,” Hegde recalled. “But he returned within minutes. I noticed fresh paint on his body and around the house. Since he worked as a painter, I checked the silencer of his motorcycle. It was completely cool. It wasn’t possible for him to have carried out the attack, returned home and started painting in that short span.”

The police ruled him out. Meanwhile, officers at Manipal Hospital told investigators that despite being in severe pain, Sumana repeatedly uttered one name – Ganesha.

After questioning residents, the police identified him as a person who stayed in the same village as Sumana. According to investigators, he had pursued her since her college and never accepted her rejection, even after she married Ramesh.

When the police went to his house, he was missing. Over the phone, Ganesha claimed he was at Manipal Hospital with his mother, but a mobile location check placed him on the outskirts of Sringeri. His photograph and vehicle details were circulated, and that night the police found him sitting in a parked car with two other men.

“I asked them to send only Ganesha because we weren’t yet certain of his involvement,” Hegde said. “Looking back, that was probably a mistake.” By the time they realised the significance of the other two men, they had escaped.

Ganesha, 36, initially denied any involvement but later confessed to masterminding the attack, the police said. He identified the two men in the car – Kabir, 30, and Majeed, 38 – as the ones who threw the acid. They were arrested the next day.

The police said the two had no personal grudge against Sumana and had been hired by Ganesha, who allegedly exploited their financial difficulties. A fourth accused, Vinod, 38, was arrested for allegedly tracking Sumana’s movements and relaying real-time updates that enabled the attackers to intercept her outside her home.

Investigators later concluded that the acid attack was not an isolated act but the culmination of a conspiracy that had begun years earlier.

The obsession and plot

According to the police investigation, Ganesha had known Sumana since her college days. He developed feelings for her during her college days and repeatedly expressed his desire to marry her. Sumana, however, consistently rejected his advances. Her parents later arranged her marriage to Ramesh, and the couple remained married for nearly six years before divorcing in 2014. The police say that Ganesha never accepted the rejection and continued pursuing Sumana even after her marriage, becoming increasingly obsessed with her over the years. Investigators claim he gradually began interfering in her personal life, ultimately setting in motion a series of events that culminated in the acid attack in 2015.

During the investigation, the police reopened a case from 2014, one year before the acid attack, when pornographic CDs, adult movie cassettes and condoms had been found scattered inside Sumana’s beauty parlour. Acting on an anonymous tip-off, the police had raided the premises. Although no wrongdoing was established against Sumana, the incident severely damaged her reputation and, according to investigators, eventually contributed to the breakdown of her marriage with Ramesh. The case had remained unsolved.

During the acid attack investigation, however, Ganesha confessed to orchestrating the entire episode. According to investigators, he had secretly entered the parlour after learning Sumana’s routine, planted the material himself and anonymously alerted the police to ensure a raid was conducted.

The four convicts: Majeed, Ganesha, Vinod and Kabir (Left to Right). (Photo Credit: Special Arrangement. Image enhanced with AI)

“He himself informed the police. More importantly, he was one of the mahazar witnesses in that case,” Hegde recalled. “That case remained unsolved until we investigated the acid attack.”

Investigators further said that Ganesha repeatedly contacted Ramesh, poisoning his mind against Sumana by questioning her character and encouraging him to divorce her. After the marriage ended, the police said Ganesha approached Sumana, telling her that he was financially well-off and would look after both her and her young son if she agreed to marry him. When she rejected him again, investigators said he even approached her sister to convince the family. That attempt also failed. Ganesha then warned her sister that if Sumana refused to marry him, she would no longer be able to “walk around with her head held high.”

Investigators believe that was when preparations for the acid attack intensified.

Testing the acid

The police said Ganesha first attempted to procure acid through a friend employed with KSRTC after learning that acid was used for cleaning buses. When the friend refused, he introduced Ganesha to another acquaintance who operated a laboratory. Through him, Ganesha obtained sulphuric acid and nitric acid.

During a search of his residence, the police noticed several plants in the backyard had turned completely black. “It immediately struck me that he had been pouring acid on them to test if they worked,” Hegde recalled.

According to investigators, Ganesha admitted he wanted to understand the effect acid would have on human skin before carrying out the attack. He made two unsuccessful attempts. In one instance, he planned to pour acid on sleeping beggars near a bus stand but abandoned the idea after a patrolling constable noticed him behaving suspiciously. On another occasion, he intended to attack a senior advocate with whom he had a land dispute. That plan, too, never materialised.

Only after those failed attempts, the police said, did he finalise the plan to attack Sumana, hiring Kabir and Majeed to execute the assault while Vinod tracked her movements.

The report that nearly changed the case

The police had, by now, filed a chargesheet against all four accused. Investigators believed they had built a strong case, backed by scientific evidence, eyewitness testimonies and the confessional statements of the accused. However, one scientific inconsistency that emerged during the trial nearly weakened the prosecution’s case.

Forensic examination detected both sulphuric acid and nitric acid on Sumana’s skin and clothes, supporting investigators’ theory that a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acids had been used. However, her scooter seat, foot mat and gloves allegedly worn by the attackers tested positive only for sulphuric acid.

“The obvious question was whether these were really the same assailants and the same acid used in the attack,” Hegde said. “There was concern that the accused could receive the benefit of the doubt.”

Investigators consulted a chemical engineer, who explained that nitric acid is considerably more volatile than sulphuric acid and degrades much faster when exposed to rain, moisture and air. The explanation matched the evidence collected during the investigation. Sumana’s clothes and skin samples had been collected almost immediately after the attack, preserving traces of both acids. In contrast, the scooter had been left outdoors in the drizzle, while the gloves and the jam jar allegedly used to transport the acid were discarded near a canal, where they remained exposed to the elements until they were recovered by the police.

The scientific explanation, supported by technical literature, was placed before the court. The prosecution argued that the disappearance of nitric acid from articles exposed to the environment did not negate the use of an acid mixture during the attack. The court accepted the explanation, overcoming what investigators describe as one of the most significant evidentiary challenges in the case.

Conviction

In July 2021, the second additional district and sessions judge in Chikkamagaluru sentenced all four accused to life imprisonment for the acid attack on Sumana.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on each convict, directing that the Rs 20 lakh collected be paid to Sumana as compensation, while also asking the District Legal Services Authority to grant her the maximum compensation under the Victim Compensation Scheme.

Judge Manjunath Sangreshi, in the judgment, described the attack as “not only worse than murder or rape, but also uncivilised and barbaric in nature,” observing that the accused had “completely destroyed the life” of the survivor in a single day and that “no amount of sentence is enough to punish the accused and they cannot compensate the loss and suffering of the victim.”

The court, therefore, refused to show any leniency and awarded the maximum punishment.

Long road to recovery

More than a decade after the acid attack, Sumana says the physical and emotional trauma continues to define her life. Over the past 11 years, she has undergone nearly 20 reconstructive surgeries and continues to require medical treatment. “I feel what was done is done. No matter how much I fix it, it won’t change,” she said while speaking to The Indian Express.

Having lost one eye and now managing with the other, which still requires daily medication and eye drops, she says years of treatment have taken a heavy toll. She recently underwent another nose surgery, one of several reconstructive procedures she has endured. “Every surgery requires multiple sittings, and I’ve reached a point where I no longer have the strength to keep going through them,” she said.

Although she has rebuilt parts of her life and now runs a beauty parlour, she says the income barely covers household expenses and her continuing medical costs. She hopes the fine imposed on the convicts will eventually be recovered and paid to her, if not for her treatment, then at least to support her son’s education.

Her son, now pursuing higher education, received financial support for his schooling from police officers. His schooling was supported by Shruti N S, now deputy commissioner of police (law and order), Hubballi-Dharwad City, while his pre-university education was funded by Uma Prashanth, currently superintendent of police, CID, Bengaluru.

The case has also renewed discussion among police officers and legal experts on the need for stronger mechanisms to ensure victims receive compensation awarded by courts. Such compensation often remains unpaid when convicts default. Some argue for legal mechanisms that would allow authorities to identify and attach the assets of defaulters and, where legally permissible, auction or sell them to ensure victims receive the compensation ordered by the courts, rather than remaining only on paper.