An Additional Sessions Court in Kerala, on Thursday, March 30, found a man guilty of murdering a 20-year-old woman, after stabbing her multiple times, in August 2021. Arun, a native of Thiruvananthapuram’s Peyadu, was 29 years old at the time of the incident. He had barged into Sooryagayathri’s house on the afternoon of August 30, 2021 and stabbed her multiple times in front of her parents. Sooryagayathri, who was rushed to the Government Medical College in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, succumbed to her injuries the next day. 

The Thiruvananthapuram Additional Sessions Court will announce the quantum of punishment on Friday. According to Manorama News, the prosecution said that Sooryagayathri’s postmortem report showed that she had sustained 33 injury marks on her body. Her parents were also attacked by Arun, when they tried to stop him. 

A few years before the murder, Arun had approached Sooryagayathri’s family with a proposal to marry her, while she was still a school student. The family, however, rejected his proposal. Valsala, the woman’s mother had told the media that they rejected the proposal as there were allegedly some cases against Arun. The man, according to the family, continued to harass her.

Four years before her death, Sooryagayathri’s family had filed a complaint with the Aryanad police in Thiruvananthapuram, alleging harassment by Arun. However, the police did not register a case based on the complaint. Instead, they “counselled” him and let him go.

In his statement to the police, Arun said that he felt insulted and so he killed the woman to seek revenge.