He planned the murders for six months.
That trusted source, according to police and court records, was an AI tool linked to a popular search engine — a discovery, a police officer said, that left investigators so stunned they “almost considered naming the AI tool as an accomplice”.
Case records show the sequence of events came to a head on June 25, when Bengaluru police arrested Kenneth (25) and his live-in partner Shwetha, both engineering graduates who had been planning to start a business, for allegedly killing her mother Muthulakshmi S (48), sister Supriya (20) and father Somasundar (54), in that order, at their flat in K R Puram three days earlier. The alleged motive, according to case records: a dispute over money Shwetha had taken from her parents to spend on her partner.
This is possibly the first time Bengaluru police have encountered such extensive use of an AI tool in the planning and execution of a murder, sources familiar with the probe said. The tool allegedly shaped Kenneth’s thinking at every stage and had a significant bearing on how the crime was planned, they said.
So much so, as part of the investigation, police have written to the AI tool’s makers seeking details of Kenneth’s interactions with it, to corroborate the digital evidence in the case.
For investigators, the case also points to the social isolation of a tech-savvy generation immersed in the information and entertainment served up by their devices. “The girl did not have any friend, male or female, other than Kenneth from her college days. Kenneth had a girlfriend earlier who left him because she suspected him of lying and stealing,” sources said.
Kenneth’s alleged inability to reflect on the consequences of his actions, a lack of social responsibility, and a rapid build-up of frustration that led to an “eliminate them” mindset, “as though life were a video game”, were among the other factors behind the crime, police sources said.
Last Saturday, a magistrate’s court remanded Kenneth to judicial custody after nine days in police custody, during which police conducted polygraph and other scientific tests to establish his motive and verify his claims. The court had earlier remanded Shwetha to judicial custody on July 10 after the end of her police custody. She has, meanwhile, sought a pardon and offered to confess.
Kenneth has allegedly told investigators that the idea of killing the family first surfaced over a “trivial grievance”. Over the following six months, guided in part by the AI tool, he grew consumed by it, sources said.
“He was planning on starting a cloud kitchen and built a furnace for this purpose. When the murder thought entered his head, he consulted the AI tool, which indicated the merits and demerits of incinerating the bodies before disposal. He had planned to repurpose the furnace he built for burning the bodies after the murder,” police sources said.
Kenneth allegedly told police that he built the iron furnace himself. “He consulted the AI tool all along the course of planning the murder. If he had spoken to a human friend, they may have advised him against the wrong course he had taken,” police said.
“The thought got into his head to ‘eliminate’ the family of his live-in partner, and he got obsessed with it. For six months, he was consumed by this,” police sources said. The impulse is alleged to have been triggered by Shwetha’s grievance against her mother for being “controlling”—and by fears that the mother would ask for Rs 50 lakh Swetha had allegedly borrowed and spent on Kenneth, sources said.
While Kenneth and Shwetha allegedly acted in tandem, the bulk of the planning and execution was Kenneth’s, police sources said.
Kenneth and Shwetha hail from well-to-do middle-class Bengaluru families. Kenneth’s father worked at a major PSU involved in aircraft manufacturing while Shwetha’s father was employed with a global IT company.
Shwetha worked for a while in Bengaluru’s IT sector after graduating but lost it after being allegedly influenced by Kenneth, sources said. Police sources described their relationship as a transactional friendship in which she funded his lifestyle.
On June 22, Shwetha’s mother was allegedly lured to the K R Puram apartment first. Once inside, Kenneth allegedly stabbed her 26 times. When Shwetha’s father and sister arrived a short while later, they were also allegedly stabbed.
After the murders, Kenneth and Shwetha went to Shwetha’s parents’ house to allegedly steal money and silver ornaments, and are alleged to have thrown her younger sister’s mobile phone near the parents’ home. They then fled to Puducherry. “They had gone to Puducherry around 15 days prior to the murder for a holiday as well,” sources said.
Key evidence includes the dying declaration of Somasundar, who was found around 9 pm on June 22 in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds on a staircase at the Sai Green apartment complex where Shwetha lived. He told police he had been stabbed by his daughter and Kenneth. “My younger daughter Supriya and my wife Muthulakshmi are still in the apartment. Please rescue them,” Somasundar said, according to the FIR, before he was taken to hospital, where he died.
Shwetha was arrested in Puducherry on June 24, two days after the murders of her parents and sister, and Kenneth within the next two days (Express photo/Special arrangement). 
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