Honey traps, extortion, fake IDs: Probe into Telangana man’s murder reveals leads investigators to probe wife’s past

Ramesh Kumar was allegedly strangled in his Maruti car in Uppal near Hyderabad on October 1 by Ankur Rana and Panthalu Niharika. The murder plot was allegedly hatched by Niharika to lay her hands on documents to a property worth Rs 8 crore in Telangana which her third husband had reportedly sold and not shared with her.

Kumar’s body was allegedly transported over a distance of 850 km from Hyderabad to Suntikoppa in the hill district of Kodagu, Karnataka by the trio in a Mercedes Benz GLA 2022 car loaned to the Telangana businessman by a friend, Kanchaty Srihari of Hyderabad.

The body was allegedly moved to a pit in a coffee estate located by the roadside in Suntikoppa a little after midnight — three days after the murder — and set aflame to prevent identification. On October 8, the body, with the face almost completely burnt, and a shoe was found by workers at the 50-acre Pannya estate.

The Kodagu police cracked the case of the unidentified body after nearly 12 days of investigations by analysing CCTV footage from over 500 cameras which led to the identification of the Mercedes Benz.

Later, technical analysis of the missing businessman’s phone records led the Kodagu police to Niharika and Nikhil and later to Rana in Haridwar, where he had gone to work as a driver after allegedly executing the murder at Niharika’s behest.

The sensational murder case took an additional turn after Rana escaped from the custody of Kodagu police in Hyderabad on October 31 before he was tracked down again to Jaipur in Rajasthan on November 5 through the combined efforts of police from multiple states.

Niharika, her past

Investigations into the murder case soon unravelled Niharika’s history on the basis of which she has been described as “dangerous” by the police.

The police found that Niharika is under trial in a case in Karnal, Haryana where she is accused of cheating her second husband Kamaldeep Saini, a software engineer, of over Rs 70 lakh after she married him claiming to be a software engineer.

According to the case registered against Niharika by Saini, she befriended him on the “Meet4U” dating app and claimed to be employed with one of the leading IT companies in India. She allegedly told Saini a sob story of a family tragedy to propose marriage after which the couple reportedly wedded on June 22, 2019 and began living together in Bengaluru.

During the marriage, Niharika allegedly claimed to have a serious illness and extracted lakhs of rupees from Saini for treatment. She also allegedly brought along a young girl who she claimed was her niece, says the case filed by the software engineer.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the couple moved to Saini’s home in Karnal in 2020-2021 where Niharika’s demands for funds allegedly increased and he discovered that she was previously married to a man called Panthalu Anantharam in Telangana and the young girl was her daughter.

Saini alleged in his cheating complaint filed in Haryana in January 2021 that the true picture emerged when he looked at her laptop one day. According to the police case in Karnal, where Niharika was arrested on February 4, 2021, she had two identities with different birth dates and had forged educational qualification certificates. Saini also claimed to have found pictures of her with other men and details of chats which indicated that she had extorted money from several people.

Rana’s alleged involvement

During her imprisonment in Karnal, from February 2021 to December 2021, Niharika met Rana – the second accused in the Ramesh Kumar murder case – police sources said. Rana’s mother was lodged in the same prison in an atrocity case, they added.

“They got acquainted when Rana used to visit his mother in jail. They continued the association after she was released from jail,” police sources claimed.

“In the last two years, Rana was in Bengaluru for about two months on Niharika’s invitation,” sources said. He had worked briefly as a driver in Bengaluru before returning to Haridwar until he was allegedly summoned by her to Hyderabad for the October 1 murder.

The police are investigating whether Rana has a criminal history as well.

Following her release on bail in the cheating case in Haryana in 2021, Niharika did not appear before the Karnal court for its trial for over two years until the court issued a non-bailable warrant for her arrest in May 2024, which resulted in her appearance in July that year. She was then arrested again before being released ahead of an August 2024 trial date.

Nikhil’s alleged role

After she returned to Bengaluru from Karnal, Niharika befriended the veterinarian Nikhil, who is the third accused in the Telangana businessman’s murder. She was allegedly living with Nikhil and looking after the pets in his clinic, the police indicated.

On November 16, a district court in Kodagu granted bail to Nikhil, who is originally from Cuddapah in Andhra Pradesh, in the Ramesh Kumar murder case by citing that he had allegedly played a role only in the destruction of evidence and did not have a direct role in the murder on account of which he faces only a maximum jail term of seven years.

“As per the story of the prosecution itself, the role of this Petitioner starts after the murder and Public Prosecutor in his objections clearly stated in para-5 that, there is an allegation against the murder with regard to the accused No.1 and 2 and accused No.3 has helped them in order to destruct the dead body…,” the district court said while granting bail to Nikhil.

In the course of the murder probe, the police found that Niharika met the businessman Ramesh Kumar during a journey on a Metro train.

The police said she knew Kumar owned properties and was allegedly targeting his wealth. Following the murder on October 1 near Hyderabad, Niharika allegedly went to Kumar’s house and collected a large number of documents in order to locate land deeds.

In a bid to throw the investigators off her trail, she allegedly sent a message to Kumar’s phone – which was in her possession – soon after the murder, stating that she was returning to Bengaluru to be with her daughter. She allegedly abandoned the deceased man’s phone in Karnataka after disposing of his body in Kodagu believing that it would cover her tracks, sources said.