Chennai techie murder: Swathi, ‘killer’ were Facebook friends

The main accused in Infosys employee Swathi’s murder is not a total stranger to the deceased, investigations have shown. The probe into the murder suggests that the two were already connected over social media for quite some time. Ram Kumar, the prime suspect who was arrested on Saturday, figures in the list of Swathi’s Facebook friends.

Sources said that they were in possession of the messages exchanged between Swathi and Ram Kumar over the social networking site. The exchanges include chat history and some of the comments made by the arrested man on the pictures posted by Swathi over a period of time.

A senior police official privy to the investigation maintained that most of the interactions between them only involved generic greetings. After media houses began flashing pictures of Swathi sourced from her Facebook page, the family had the page deactivated.

It was through social media that the suspect got Swathi’s number. This was how a text message sent by Ram Kumar before committing the murder got delivered to the cloned mobile phone of Swathi. “Being friends on Facebook doesn’t mean that Swathi approved or encouraged him. She had numerous Facebook friends. Ram Kumar stalked Swathi on Facebook and he began tracking her in real life too,” noted a senior police official.

Investigations revealed that Ram Kumar had moved to Chennai with the idea of making it big in the Tamil film industry and had been awaiting a “chance” from filmmakers, including actor-turned-director S.J. Surya.

The cinema ambitions of Ram Kumar, coupled with his interest in Swathi, made him choose Choolaimedu as his place of residence.

There he found low cost lodgings which was also in close proximity to the house where Swathi lived. He reportedly decided on staying at this place so that he could meet Swathi and also seek opportunities to be part of the film industry.