Telugu actor Bhargavi was found murdered at her Banjara Hills residence in Hyderabad on Tuesday. The police also found the dead body of one Praveen Kumar in the same room. Investigators say Praveen Kumar murdered Bhargavi before consuming poison.
The police found Praveen Kumar's suicide note that said Bhargavi was his wife and he killed her because she had started neglecting him after her success in films. Bhargavi's parents have denied that she ever married Praveen Kumar.
Forensic reports, which said the murder occurred between late Monday night and the wee hours of Tuesday, said Bhargavi, who shot to fame with a recent movie Ashta Chamma, was stabbed several times.
Bhargavi's mother said the actor had talked to her over phone at around 4 am. The servant alerted the police when Bhargavi did not open her apartment door in the morning.
Apart from the suicide note, the police found the knife used in the murder, a bottle of poison and a cold drink bottle in the room. Praveen Kumar, accepting responsibility for the murder, said in the note he was unhappy that she had started ignoring him after the success of Ashta Chamma.
Praveen Kumar, who hails from Nellore also claimed that he had married Bhargavi at a hotel in 2006 but they were staying separately as she had shifted to Hyderabad. Bhargavi, who hails from Guntur, had worked for some time with Praveen Kumar's Sai Baba orchestra group in Nellore. Later, she shifted to Hyderabad and worked as a television anchor and also acted in TV serials.
The police have gathered that Praveen Kumar had married two girls in the past, both of them artists in his orchestra group. He was married to Dolly, who he divorced to marry Swapna, with whom he has a two-and-a-half-year child.
The news of Bhargavi's murder came as a jolt to the Telugu film industry where many big banners had approached her with offers. According to industry sources, she had received ten offers and was working in a movie Holidays.
The incident has come at a time when Andhra Pradesh is yet to recover from the killing of an obsessive lover who allegedly threw acid on an engineering college student in Warangal.
