Kannur burglary ends in Mysuru murder: Siddaraju built detonator a month ago to kill lover

Kannur/ Mysuru: Around 2.45 pm on August 23, Darshitha (22) and her lover Siddaraju B N (22) checked into a lodge at Saligrama town in Mysuru. Within 10 minutes, Siddaraju, also known as Appu, stepped out, saying he was going to buy food. When he returned 20 minutes later, the door was locked from inside, and Darshitha was not responding." He told us he couldn't get in, so we opened the door with the spare key," said an executive of the lodge.

What lay inside the room was gruesome. Darshitha was found in a pool of blood, her face disfigured beyond recognition. "Siddaraju broke down. He said it might have happened after her mobile phone exploded on her face and offered to take her to a hospital," the executive said. However, the staff sensed something was wrong, especially since the woman was clearly dead, and called the police.

Saligrama police arrived and, within hours, called Siddaraju's bluff. "He was full (of) drama," said Inspector Shashi Kumar V S, investigating officer and station house officer of Saligrama station. Police investigations found that Siddaraju had restrained Darshitha, tied her hands to stop her from resisting, and forced an electric detonator into her mouth, triggering it with the wire of a mobile charger. After the blast, he untied her, staged the scene to look normal, and left the room to create an alibi, said the inspector. The lodge door, which locked automatically from inside, gave his act an air of credibility. Or that's what he thought. Darshitha, a native of Bilikere, and Siddaraju, from Periyapatna -- two villages barely 40 km apart in Mysuru district -- were relatives and had been in a relationship for seven years, said Inspector Shashi Kumar.

Unknown to Karnataka's Saligrama police, Kerala's Karikkottakari police in Kannur district were desperately trying to reach Darshitha since the night of Friday, August 22. Gold jewellery worth ₹22.25 lakh and ₹4 lakh in cash were missing from her husband's house at Kalliad in Kannur's hill panchayat called Padiyoor in Iritty taluk.

Three and a half years ago, Darshitha married a bus driver named Subhas A P of Kalliad in Kannur's Padiyoor, a border village in Iritty taluk. He now works as a commercial driver in Dubai. They have a two-year-old daughter. On Friday evening, when Subhas's mother Sumatha and younger brother Sooraj -- both granite quarry workers -- returned home, they found Darshitha and her daughter missing. After a few calls, they found that she had gone to her parents' home at Bilikere, 120 km from Kalliad. Late in the evening, Sumatha found 240 gm of gold jewellery and ₹4 lakh in cash missing from the cupboard. She immediately filed a complaint with Karikkottakari. "All through Saturday, we were trying to reach Darshitha. Her relatives in Karnataka told us that she was returning to Kannur. Around 2.30 pm, the relatives said she had reached Virajpet. But after that, somebody else answered her phone and turned it off," said Inspector V J Vinoy, SHO of Karikkottakari Police Station. In the night, he sent a squad to Darshitha's village. "When our team reached there in the morning, we were told Darshitha was murdered in a lodge," he said.

Darshitha is still not a suspect in the theft of gold and cash, he said. "That's because the gold and cash are not found in her house. Karnataka police said they found nothing on Siddaraju either. We need to get his custody and question him (in the theft case)," said Vinoy.

‘Murder planned a month ago’
Saligrama police, investigating the murder case, said the crime was planned months in advance. Siddaraju, a cement dealer, comes from Periyapatna, a region surrounded by granite quarries, said Inspector Shashi Kumar. “He knows how a detonator works and how it is made." An electric detonator contains a tiny explosive charge that is triggered by an electric current, which in turn sets off a stronger secondary explosive used in mining and quarrying. "He used an old charger to make the detonator, and he made it a month ago,” the officer said.

On Saturday, Darshitha left her daughter at her parents' home and was in Saligrama town with Siddaraju since morning. They checked into a lodge around 2.45 pm, saying she was not feeling well and was hungry, the officer said. “Siddaraju first entered the room under the guise of checking it and placed the wire and detonator inside,” he said. Four minutes later, he brought Darshitha into the room and was out within 10 minutes. “We think he killed her immediately. By 2.53 pm, she was dead,” the officer said. “It was a cold-blooded murder, not a spontaneous act arising from a heated argument.” The officer said that the two had been in daily contact over the phone even after she got married. Karikkottakari SHO Vinoy said Karnataka police informed him that Darshitha had loaned ₹80,000 to Siddaraju and was asking for it back. “Siddaraju also told Karnataka police that Darshitha was planning to join her husband in Dubai during his next vacation, and that may have been a motive. That is his version. We do not know the truth yet,” he said. What is clear, however, is that the murder has shattered two families across two states.

Cross-border marriages
The case also highlights a growing trend of cross-border marriages in the region. Many men in Padiyoor marry women from Karnataka due to an acute shortage of brides for blue-collar workers. “It started five to seven years ago,” said panchayat member K Rakesh of the CPM. Men often ignore caste and language differences when looking for brides in Karnataka, he said. “But recently, villages in Karnataka have stopped sending their daughters to Kerala,” he said.

To address the shortage, the panchayat has started playing matchmaker. Recently, Padiyoor panchayat called for applications from unmarried men as well as divorced and widowed women. “As of now, we have received 3,000 applications from men and only 200 from women,” Rakesh said, underscoring the continuing imbalance.