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.

What happened in 2006?

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.

Investigations revealed that Anand and Vidyalakshmi had been in love since their school days in Chennai. But Anand’s financial instability and his caste background led Vidyalakshmi’s parents to oppose the relationship. Eventually, they arranged her marriage with Anantharaman — a match she accepted, but with ulterior motives.

The police learnt that Anand and Anburaj had travelled in an unreserved compartment on the same train as the newlyweds. Anand was originally to be joined by another accomplice, who backed out at the last moment. Anburaj was brought in instead.

At Guruvayoor, the two men briefly met Vidyalakshmi while her husband was away. When the couple continued to Munnar, Anand and Anburaj followed them and unsuccessfully tried to check in to the same resort. They then found a room at nearby Hotel Arafa. From there, they made their way to Kundala Dam, where Anantharaman was strangled with his own camera strap. After confirming the attackers had fled, Vidyalakshmi fabricated her story and alerted the driver.

Interestingly, she told a different version to Anantharaman’s brother — that the taxi driver had killed her husband. This contradiction later helped the prosecution build a case against her and her co-accused.

The police also found minor bloodstains on the clothes of all three accused — stains that matched Anantharaman’s blood group.

It came to light that Vidyalakshmi had been in constant touch with Anand throughout the honeymoon, using her husband’s phone, without his knowledge. When Anand reached Kundala Dam and faced poor mobile phone reception, he used the autorickshaw driver’s phone to get last-minute directions from her.

All three were arrested and lodged in Devikulam Sub-Jail. A year later, the trial court found them guilty. Anand and Vidyalakshmi were sentenced to double life imprisonment, and Anburaj to life imprisonment.

The three appealed to the Kerala High Court. But in January 2012, a bench comprising Justices R. Basant and P.Q. Barkath Ali dismissed their pleas.

“The learned counsel for A1 (Anand) and A3 (Vidyalakshmi) want this Court to accept that the relationship had come to an end in 2004. Evidently, the love letters are not dated and this affords them the opportunity to advance such a contention,” noted the judges. “We have satisfactory evidence about the telephonic contacts between A1 and A3 after the marriage was fixed — immediately before and after,” they added.

As to why Vidyalakshmi married Anantharaman despite wanting to be with Anand, the court speculated: “May be more mischievous ideas crept into her cranium and she may have thought that as a widow there may have been better chances of having a life with A1.”

Pivotal witness

If this case was solved on the same day as the murder — unlike the Meghalaya case, which took a week — much of the credit goes to the alert autorickshaw driver who sensed something amiss and acted swiftly. His testimony as “Prosecution Witness Number Two (PW2)” was pivotal. As the Kerala High Court observed: “The assessment and response of PW2, to crown all other circumstances, is eloquent about the manner in which A1 and A2 behaved and reacted on that crucial day.”