A Chennai man’s honeymoon murder in Munnar and striking parallels to the Meghalaya case Premium

A Chennai man’s honeymoon murder in Munnar and striking parallels to the Meghalaya case

On the night of June 16, 2006, Anantharaman, a 30-year-old resident of Shankar Nagar, Pammal, and Vidyalakshmi, 24, whom he had married just nine days earlier, boarded a train from Chennai to Thrissur, Kerala, for their honeymoon. The following morning, the couple offered prayers at the famed Guruvayoor temple. They then travelled in a tourist taxi to the scenic hill station of Munnar and checked into Sterling Resorts.

The next day, they visited the Kundala Dam, a popular tourist spot. The couple hired a pedal boat but returned to the jetty earlier than scheduled. They then proceeded to a secluded area near the dam. Sometime later, a visibly shaken Vidyalakshmi ran to their taxi driver and told him that two men had attacked them, strangled Anantharaman to death, and fled with cash and valuables. The driver immediately alerted the police.

Elsewhere, two young men — Anand and Anburaj — were travelling from Kundala Dam to Hotel Arafa in an autorickshaw. They grew nervous when they saw police jeeps rushing past them in the opposite direction. The men told the driver they wanted to leave Munnar at the earliest. Sensing their anxiety, the auto driver became suspicious. Later, while the men were at the hotel, he shared his concerns with friends and informed the police.

The police quickly brought the two men in for questioning. Vidyalakshmi was already at the station. According to a report in The Hindu dated June 20, 2006, “The complaint preferred by Ms. Sreevidya [Vidyalakshmi, then wrongly identified] said her husband went into the woods where the assailants attacked him and robbed her of her jewellery.” She likely did not expect to come face-to-face at the police station with the very men who had helped kill her husband.

Soon, the truth began to unravel — a secret love affair, a honeymoon, and a cold-blooded murder.

Back then, few would have imagined that this sensational case would find eerie echoes 19 years later in Meghalaya, where Raja Raghuvanshi, a man from Indore, was murdered during his honeymoon — a plot allegedly hatched by his wife, Sonam.

Returning to June 2006: at the police station, officers found a handwritten travel itinerary in Anand’s possession, tracing a route from Chennai to Munnar. Under interrogation, he admitted that Vidyalakshmi had given him the itinerary.