Panthalu Niharika, Nikita, Sailatha and Akula Sailatha... If you are thinking that these are four different women, then it is not so. All these four names belong to the same woman. The woman, who used to trap grooms for herself on dating apps by changing her name and identity. Not only this, this woman, who claimed to be a software engineer, also made two lovers, so that she could use them in her evil deeds. Now this woman is behind bars on the charge of murdering her third husband and her entire crime horoscope has come out. Come, let us tell you her story from the beginning.
The date was 8 October 2024 and the place was a coffee plantation in Kodagu, Karnataka. When the workers reached the plantation early in the morning to work, they found the body of a man in a half-burnt condition. There was a commotion in the plantation and the police was immediately informed about the matter. The police also found a burnt shoe near the body. After sending the body for post-mortem, the police started investigating the case.
The face of the dead body was burnt. No clue to identify the dead body was found on the spot. In such a situation, the police started searching the CCTV footage of the surrounding area. After investigating about 500 CCTV cameras for 12 days, the police got the first clue. This clue was a Mercedes Benz car, which was seen near the coffee plantation. When the police got the details of the owner through the number, it was found that the dead body belonged to a businessman named Ramesh Kumar.
Now when the police took out the call details of Ramesh's mobile, the case started getting exposed. The person who carried out this murder was none other than Ramesh's wife Panthalu Niharika. Her two lovers - Mai Reddy Nikhil and Ankur Rana also helped her in carrying out the murder. The police arrested all three of them. When they were questioned, a story came out that might shock you too.
In fact, 29-year-old Panthalu Niharika alias Nikita alias Sailatha alias Akula Sailatha had a long history of robbing people by trapping them in her net. She has married three times and has been involved in the business of fraud and honey trapping since 2017. She used to meet every new person with a new name and new identity. The reason behind the murder of 54-year-old Ramesh Kumar was his property worth Rs 8 crore, which he had recently sold.
To grab the property money, Niharika along with her two lovers planned to murder her husband. On 1 October, Niharika and her lover Ankur Rana strangled Ramesh to death in his Maruti car in Uppal, Hyderabad. Three days later, the body was put in a Mercedes car and taken to Kodagu, a hilly district of Karnataka, 850 km from Hyderabad.
Ramesh had borrowed this Mercedes from his friend Kanchati Srihari for a few days. After midnight, the three threw Ramesh's body into a coffee plantation located on the roadside and set it on fire to hide their identity. However, the police spotted this Mercedes car in the CCTV camera, and the whole case was revealed from its number.
During the investigation of Ramesh Kumar's murder case, Niharika's crime record came to light. In 2017, Niharika was arrested in Bangalore for extorting money from a software engineer. She was accused of luring the engineer into a physical relationship. At that time, Niharika was part of a gang that used to honeytrap software engineers.
However, in 2019, she was acquitted in this case along with eight others. On searching Niharika's record, it was found that while living in a PG in Bengaluru, she had married Panthalu Anantaram from Telangana. In January 2021, a software engineer named Kamaldeep Saini, living in Karnal, Haryana, filed a complaint against her for fraud of more than Rs 70 lakh.
In his complaint, Kamaldeep said that he met Niharika on the dating app 'Meet4U'. Here Niharika introduced herself as a software engineer and said that she works in a big company. Slowly, they started talking and one day Niharika proposed to him for marriage. Niharika also told him a fake sad story of her family and on 22 June 2019, both of them got married. After marriage, both of them started living in Bangalore.
She also brought a little girl with her and introduced her as her niece. After marriage, Niharika said that she had a serious illness and started extorting money from Kamaldeep in the name of treatment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both of them returned to Karnal in the year 2020-2021 and here Niharika's demand for money started increasing. During this time, Kamaldeep came to know that she was already married to a man named Panthalu Anantaram from Telangana and that the little girl was his daughter.
In January 2021, Kamaldeep filed a fraud complaint against her. He said that he came to know the truth about Niharika when he checked her laptop. This laptop contained objectionable pictures and chat details of Niharika with many other people. Niharika was arrested on 4 February 2021. Two identity cards with different dates of birth and fake degrees were also found with her.
Niharika met Ankur Rana in Karnal jail in Haryana. Her second husband had filed a fraud case against Niharika and she was in jail from February 2021 to December 2021. Ankur Rana's mother Satoshi was also lodged in the same jail in a case. Whenever he went to meet his mother, he started talking to Niharika and gradually both of them became friends.
In the last two years, Ankur Rana stayed in Bangalore for about two months on Niharika's call. He worked as a driver in Bangalore until Niharika's husband was murdered. After the murder, Ankur fled to Haridwar. During the investigation, it was found that he also had a criminal record. His wife died in Haridwar after being burnt, after which his in-laws accused him of murder. Apart from this, he was also involved in some cases of vehicle theft in Uttar Pradesh.
After being released on bail in the fraud case in 2021, Niharika did not appear in the Karnal court for more than two years. The court issued a non-bailable warrant against her in May 2024, following which she appeared in July of the same year. She was arrested again ahead of the hearing date of August 2024 and later released.
When Niharika returned to Bangalore from Karnal after getting bail, she met veterinarian Mai Reddy Nikhil. After some time, she started an affair with Nikhil and started living with him. It was here that one day Niharika met businessman Ramesh Kumar in the metro. Slowly, they started talking and the closeness grew so much that Ramesh left his first wife to marry Niharika.
N.iharika knew that Ramesh had a lot of property and she wanted to acquire it. To save herself, she sent a message on Ramesh's phone, which was with her, immediately after the murder. In the message, she wrote that she was returning to Bangalore to live with her daughter. After this, she threw Ramesh's phone away. In the case of Ramesh Kumar's murder, the court held that he only helped Niharika in destroying the evidence and hence she was granted bail.
