HIV-positive Mallikarjun murdered; 'killed brother to save family's honour', says sister; father with shocking allegation

BENGALURU: A sister and her husband killed her HIV-positive younger brother to save the family's honour. The deceased was Mallikarjun (23) from Chitradurga district of Karnataka. The murder was committed by his sister Nisha and her husband Manjunath. Nisha has been taken into custody by the police. The police are searching for Nisha's husband, who is absconding.

Mallikarjun, who worked in a private firm in Bengaluru, used to visit his family regularly. On July 23, while he was going to his village in a friend's car, the vehicle collided with a parked truck. Mallikarjun was seriously injured in the accident.

He was initially admitted to a hospital in Chitradurga but was later shifted to a private hospital in Davangere for special care. Doctors found that Mallikarjun was HIV positive in a blood test conducted before the surgery. The doctors had advised the family to shift him to another hospital after he was bleeding uncontrollably.

Following this, on the evening of July 25, Nisha informed her father that Mallikarjun was being taken to a hospital in Udupi. However, the next day, Nisha and her husband Manjunath returned home with her brother's dead body.

After seeing the marks on his son's neck, father Nagarajappa became suspicious of his daughter and son-in-law. After questioning both of them, they confessed to the crime. After the accused confessed to the crime, Nagarajappa filed a complaint against Nisha and Manjunath at the Holalkere police station.

The accused, who gave a statement to the police, said they committed the murder out of fear that the family would be shamed in public if the information about Manjunath's HIV infection was revealed. However, the father, Nagarajappa, alleged that this was a blatant lie and that they killed their son for the family property.