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For weeks, 55-year-old Gade Vijayalakshmi has lived in a state of suspended animation, running from pillar to post, searching police stations and mortuaries in Vijayawada for any sign of her 25-year-old son Sai Krishna.
All she remembers is a chilling directive allegedly given to her by Krishnalanka Circle Inspector Nagaraju on May 9: “Buy a funeral garland.”
In the dark history of police brutality cases, from Tamil Nadu’s infamous Sathankulam tragedy to the backrooms of Andhra Pradesh, families are usually left with a grim finality – a body to weep over and perform the last rites for.
But in this case, there is no dead body.
Instead, Vijayalakshmi is trapped in a nightmare of competing political narratives, wiped CCTV footage, and the terrifying possibility that her son’s body was given an undocumented, hurried cremation at a local electric crematorium.
On May 6, Sai Krishna was picked up by the Krishnalanka police from Markapuram, a town nearly 300 km from Vijayawada. Weeks later, the Andhra Pradesh Police are unable to answer the most basic questions before the High Court: Where is Sai Krishna? Is he dead? And if so, where is his body?
One possible clue may lie at a crematorium in Vijayawada.
The Swargapuri Burial Ground in Krishnalanka has for the past few weeks seen a steady stream of journalists and members of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Andhra Pradesh Police, amid claims that Sai Krishna’s body had been electrically cremated to conceal a custodial death.
Two burial ground employees told TNM they were in no position to verify those allegations. However, Basha, one of the employees, recalled that four unidentified dead bodies had arrived from Krishnalanka police station on May 23. “Two came in the morning and two between 7–8 pm,” he said. “We don’t know which was Sai Krishna’s, or even if any of them were his.”
Krishnalanka police station is located near the Pandit Nehru bus station, the railway tracks, and the Krishna river. A sizable homeless population also lives below the nearby Kanakadurga flyover. According to Basha, unidentified bodies frequently turn up in the area because of these factors.
“We don’t see the bodies,” another employee seated beside Basha interjected. Requesting anonymity, he said, “Our work begins only after we verify the paperwork from the police and the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC). We then carry out the cremation. It’s routine work… we never imagined it would become part of such a major controversy.”
Following the Sai Krishna case, the Swargapuri burial ground has been maintaining a new register to record the date and place where an unidentified body was found, the gender and approximate age of the deceased, and a signature from the VMC vehicle depot driver who brings any dead body to the ground. They are also asking for the copy of a letter written by a police official to the VMC’s vehicle depot in-charge. Before, they would merely jot down the date and time of the cremation.
The discomfort of the burial ground employees was evident, but it mirrors a larger ambiguity at the heart of the case.
In the days since the allegations surfaced, competing narratives from media outlets, political actors and pressure groups have only deepened the controversy, with some rallying behind CI Nagaraju and others demanding accountability. Sai Krishna’s criminal past, his caste, and why a task force was sent to arrest him have all become points of contention.
According to data submitted by the Union Home Affairs Ministry in the Parliament, 806 custodial death cases were registered in India between April 2021 and March 2026, of which 11 were in Andhra Pradesh. Many investigations have shown that scores of custodial deaths don’t even get classified as such.
But in Sai Krishna’s case, at the centre of the controversy is an unusual and troubling fact: there is no body.
Who is Sai Krishna?
Krishna, who dropped out of school after class 9, was working for a food delivery app in Markapuram.
But he was not just a gig worker. He had at least 20 criminal cases registered against him, mainly in Vijayawada. The list of charges ranged from convictions for petty violations under the Andhra Pradesh Gaming Act to a pending trial under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, and a 2019 case for voluntarily causing hurt using dangerous weapons.
There was also a rape case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, in which he was acquitted. His family says the POCSO case was foisted on him for being in a relationship with a relative when he was himself still a minor.
Out of the 20 cases, Sai Krishna had already been acquitted in three, including the POCSO charge, while six ended in a compromise, four resulted in convictions, and the remaining were either under investigation or pending trial.
On May 6, Sai Krishna was picked up at 3 am from his house in Markapuram by a constable from the Krishnalanka station who was accompanied by a sub-inspector and two other personnel of the task force.
According to his family and legal counsel, his checkered past made him the perfect target for a police force looking to score quick points.
His mother’s lawyer, KV Aditya Chowdary, believes the midnight raid had less to do with immediate danger and more to do with the police wanting to display their prowess in clamping down on the local ganja (cannabis) trade by making an example out of him. Others in the city whispered that Sai Krishna had played a role in a crossfire between powerful local real estate players.
Yet several questions remain: why was he detained suddenly? And why did the task force get involved?
That uncertainty has allowed speculation to flourish.
Vijayalakshmi told media outlets that she had not heard from her son since the first week of May.
On May 9, she said Krishnalanka CI Nagaraju summoned her. When she rushed to the station that’s located near her house, the police, she alleged, seized her phone and deleted its contents.
“CI Nagaraju told me to buy a garland for my son. He said I should assume he is dead,” she alleged.
Vijayalakshmi also alleged that while at the station, she briefly saw a young man being assaulted and believed it was her son, but was prevented from getting a closer look.
“When I returned to collect my phone, CI Nagaraju told another officer, Murali Krishna, to delete all the data and hand it back to me,” she said. “Since then, I have been running from pillar to post. There is no trace of my son and I keep hearing different accounts of what may have happened to him.”
Vijayalakshmi said she spent weeks searching for her son, visiting police stations and mortuaries. She has accused several Krishnalanka police personnel—including the Station House Officer (SHO) J Murali Krishna, Ashok, Babu Rao and Sivaram Krishna—of involvement in her son’s disappearance.
Despite her fears, Vijayalakshmi said she has not given up hope. “I still believe I will see my son.”
The Bezwada Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee decided to undertake its own fact-finding exercise after Vijayalakshmi reached out to them via her sister, advocate M Kanakadurga.
“Vijayalakshmi met with the Committee on May 29. Our chairman Ram Prasad contacted me and other convenors of the committee and we went on a fact-finding visit to Markapuram in the first week of June. Sai Krishna’s neighbours confirmed that he was picked up by Krishnalanka police and task force officials from his home and brought to Vijayawada,” Mallemudi Satish Babu, a lawyer and member of the Committee, said.
Delay in filing FIR
When it became apparent that Sai Krishna was missing, the Committee put Vijayalakshmi in touch with lawyer KV Aditya Chowdary. Aditya filed a habeas corpus petition before the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
Speaking to TNM, Aditya said, “Despite the allegations against CI Nagaraju, the state government’s counsel asked the court to direct Nagaraju himself to produce Krishna by June 15.”
The officer assigned to investigate the disappearance or death was SHO Murali Krishna, one of the police officials whom Vijayalakshmi had already named as being involved in her son’s disappearance.
“I don’t understand how the Krishnalanka police can investigate its own case. It is also a blunder to register an FIR in the very same police station where officials have been accused of torture and murder. If the allegations are that the entire station has colluded with CI Nagaraju in Krishna’s disappearance, I don’t know how they can investigate themselves. The IO (also the SHO post Nagaraju’s suspension) is himself involved in the case. When the same working constables and other officials have to work against their accused colleagues, what are the chances of justice?” Aditya added.
He also faulted the FIR being registered under Section 103(1) (crime of murder) of BNS. “When there is no body, how can they prima facie register a murder case? This is only to mislead people into believing that action has been taken against the suspected cop,” he said.
Vijayalakshmi submitted an e-complaint on May 28 to the NTR Commissionerate. But the FIR was not registered until June 19, 23 days later. The same day, she met Andhra Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu who assured her that the government would carry out an impartial inquiry into the incident and justice would be delivered.
She had also sent representations to the Vijayawada Police Commissioner and other higher officials via registered post on June 5.
Missing CCTV footage
Satish Babu, the lawyer who was part of the fact-finding committee, filed a petition before the 2nd Additional Judicial Magistrate in Vijayawada asking for all CCTV footage in and around the premises of Krishnalanka police station between May 1 and June 1 to be preserved.
On June 18, the Magistrate directed the SHO of Krishnalanka police and the Vijayawada Commissioner to present the CCTV footage before the court.
However, all CCTV footage in that time period were found to have been deleted from the Krishnalanka police station. Notably, the Vijayawada Commissioner is also responsible for monitoring, maintaining, and preserving CCTV footage at the Police Command Control Centre.
CI Nagaraju was finally arrested by the SIT on June 23. This was after Sai Krishna’s disappearance started hogging headlines and former chief minister and YSRCP leader Jagan Mohan Reddy asked why Sai Krishna’s body was still missing.
“Chandrababu Naidu garu, is Sai Krishna dead or alive? If he is dead, where is his body?” Reddy asked in a post on X, adding, “Why haven’t any arrests been made yet?”
The remand report
The remand report filed by the SIT before an additional judicial magistrate was clear on its findings. Sai Krishna had indeed been picked up at 3 am on May 6 from his home in Markapuram by a constable from the Krishnalanka station who was accompanied by a sub-inspector and two other personnel of the task force. Two non-bailable warrants are pending against him: one in the NDPS case and another in a 2019 case for causing hurt using dangerous weapons.
The remand report says that Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Lalitha Kumari told the SIT that on Nagaraju’s request, she deputed three personnel of the task force. But the report offers no explanation about why the task force had to accompany the police for this arrest and why it had to be done in the dead of the night, as Sai Krishna had been living at the same address for nearly a year.
After detention, Sai Krishna was brought to Vijayawada and handed over to the sentry police constable at the Krishnalanka police station. The report says Sai Krishna was not produced before a judicial magistrate and that Nagaraju has not provided any explanation for this lapse. The most sinister finding of the SIT was that all CCTV footage had been deleted.
Vijayalakshmi, her sister Kanakadurga, and a sub-inspector of the Krishnalanka police told the SIT that they had seen Sai Krishna at the police station. Vijayalakshmi said there were injuries visible on his body, and he had been tied up.
But from here, the report is hazy. It states that a sub-inspector saw Sai Krishna in the station on May 8, two days after he was brought from Markapuram. But what happened to Sai Krishna after that?
The SIT says that the chain of events, Nagaraju’s concealment of material facts and the injuries on Sai Krishna’s body “indicates that the dead body was concealed, buried or otherwise clandestinely disposed of with an intention to cause disappearance of evidence.”
What is now clear is the lawlessness of the police personnel at Krishnalanka station, but it does not end there.
Even before the SIT probe began, Jada Sravan Kumar, a lawyer-turned-politician, held a press conference on June 19 and laid out a detailed account of what he claimed had transpired.
He alleged that after Sai Krishna was picked up from Markapuram and brought to Vijayawada, he was moved between multiple police stations before being taken to a hotel room near Vinayak theatre on Bandar Road and tortured there.
“The hotel room was booked in Nagaraju’s name,” Sravan alleged.
He further alleged that Sai Krishna was taken on May 14 to a vaidyashala and then a private hospital on May 15. According to him, when the treatment yielded little result, an RMP (rural medical practitioner) was brought to treat Sai Krishna. Sravan alleged that Sai Krishna died in the hotel room.
“The police dumped his body at the RTC bus stand in Krishnalanka and then electrically cremated it,” Sravan alleged.
Two days after Sravan’s press conference and the heavy attention it received, the Andhra Pradesh government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the Sai Krishna case.
When TNM met Sravan, he said that he learned about the supposed sequence of events through people familiar with the case.
Police officials who spoke to TNM said there was little evidence available to corroborate Sravan’s version. However, Sravan’s allegation that the body was taken on May 23 to the crematorium is being investigated by the SIT.
The political fallout
Sai Krishna and CI Nagaraju belong to the Kapu community, one of the largest caste groups in Andhra Pradesh. Opposition YSR Congress Party leaders repeatedly raised this aspect of the case, asking why Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, a Kapu leader himself, had initially remained silent.
“I request Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan to ensure a proper investigation into the case. Even if he does not wish to view this through the lens of caste, he should at least take a humanitarian approach. A grieving mother’s tears warrant a response,” YSRCP leader Ambati Rambabu said.
Responding to the criticism, Pawan Kalyan rejected suggestions that he should intervene because Sai Krishna belonged to his caste.
“We cannot remain silent when caste is invoked selectively in matters of law and order,” he said. “Please do not reduce me to my caste identity. If someone from my caste commits a crime, what do you expect me to do? Should I take responsibility for it?”
Pawan Kalyan also referred to the POCSO case in which Sai Krishna had previously been accused and later acquitted, asking whether he was expected to defend an individual merely because he belonged to his community.
His remarks triggered sharp reactions from several Kapu leaders within the YSRCP, including former ministers Kurasala Kannababu and Dadisetti Raja, as well as former MP Vanga Geetha. The leaders accused Pawan Kalyan of acting as “a tool in Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s diversion politics” and driving attention away from more pressing issues confronting the state.
Some YSRCP leaders went further, alleging that CM Naidu had historically sought to portray prominent Kapu leaders—from Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga onwards—as anti-social elements and was now using Pawan Kalyan to weaken the community’s political influence from within.
Vijayalakshmi’s relative Mallapudi Nageshwar Rao said political parties had done little to assist the family and credited the Radha Ranga Mitra Mandali with supporting their efforts to trace Sai Krishna.
The Mandali is an organisation dedicated to preserving the legacy of the late Kapu leader Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga.
“Because organisations like the Radha Ranga Mitra Mandali exist, the police still have some fear,” Nageshwar Rao said. “The Mandali helped us obtain information and guided us. Mandali leader Chennupati Seenu and others stood by us. If Ranga garu were alive today, the police would not behave this way.”
The media has also put forth competing narratives. While several pro-YSRCP media channels have focused solely on Vijayalakshmi’s plight and demanded a CBI enquiry, several others have defended Nagaraju. Andhra Jyothi newspaper and TV5 channel, both known to favour TDP, reported that there was strong support for Nagaraju in Krishnalanka after several residents demonstrated in his support.
But Nagaraju could not be shielded for long.
A video surfaced on June 18, the day Nagaraju was placed under suspension. It was recorded on May 21 by a Dalit man named Perupogu Kranthi Kumar. Forty-two-year-old Kranthi announced his intention to die by suicide, saying that he could no longer endure the alleged harassment by CI Nagaraju.
“CI Nagaraju is responsible for my death. My only mistake was that I was born into the Madiga community. I have been hunted and beaten for the past three months. I cannot live anymore,” Kranthi says in his dying declaration in the video.
His father, Venkateswara Rao, who is also the president of the Andhra Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS), has asked for an SIT, similar to that probing Sai Krishna’s death, to be constituted for his son.
In the infamous Sathankulam custodial death case, in which a father and son were tortured to death by police personnel at the Sathankulam police station in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district in June 2020, post-mortem reports documenting extensive injuries and witness statements from two police personnel proved crucial in establishing the case. Nine police officials were sentenced to death by a Madurai court in April 2026.
If Sai Krishna was killed, his body has not yet been recovered. The Swargapuri Burial Ground does not preserve ashes of unidentified bodies. Even if it had, retrieving DNA from ashes of electrically cremated bodies is almost impossible, according to experts.
“In an electric crematorium, the temperature is extremely high. When the body is burned at such high temperatures, proteins and other basic biological materials become heavily denatured. As a result, the possibility of obtaining DNA from it is very low. On the other hand, if we are dealing with partially burned bones, these problems may not arise. In cases of traditional pyre cremation, the heat may not always penetrate completely into the interior of the bones. Because of that, in some situations DNA may still be recoverable,” a professor of forensic medicine, who didn’t want to be named, told TNM.
The investigation now hinges on Nagaraju or other police officers making confessions that establish the chain of events.