Mohan Kumar was a government school teacher in coastal Karnataka who, according to police and a long run of court findings, courted young women under false names, promised to marry them without a dowry, and then gave them cyanide that he called a contraceptive pill. Most of the women died in the toilets of bus stands in Mysuru, Bengaluru and Hassan, far from home, and their deaths were recorded as suicides or unexplained deaths. Nobody connected them until 2009, when the disappearance of a 22-year-old woman from Bantwal taluk set off protests, a special police team traced her phone, and the trail ended at his house near Mangaluru.
He was arrested on October 21, 2009. Police said at the time that he had been linked to the deaths of 18 young women. Prosecutors brought about 20 separate cases, and sessions courts in Mangaluru tried them one at a time over the next decade, often with Kumar acting as his own lawyer and appearing by video link from prison. The press has called the result 20 convictions, but the court record is more mixed. The Karnataka High Court confirmed one of his death sentences, commuted another, and threw out a third murder conviction for lack of evidence. A trial court acquitted him in at least one case, and in August 2026 the High Court upheld that acquittal.
The Indian press calls him "Cyanide Mohan." Each of the cases reported in detail included a charge of rape, and Indian law forbids publishing the name of a victim of a sexual offense.
Kumar came from Kanyana, a village in Bantwal taluk of Dakshina Kannada district, according to the Deccan Herald. He was 46 when he was arrested. The Deccan Herald described him in 2009 as a former temporary primary school teacher who had left teaching after about 23 years; a later Deccan Herald report called him a former physical education teacher. The Karnataka High Court described him in 2017 as a former government school teacher who was often absent from duty and said he was dismissed from service in 2009 after a long unauthorized absence. Open magazine, in a long account published in January 2014, wrote that he taught mathematics, social science and English in a transferable government job, and that the education department suspended him for absence without leave.
He married three times. According to Open, he divorced his first wife in the early 1990s and then kept two households in different towns, with a second wife and their two daughters in one and a third wife and their two sons in the other; neither woman knew about the other. He told the High Court in 2017 that he had divorced his first wife, that his third wife had filed for divorce, and that he still had to support his second wife. When he was arrested he was living with his third wife at Deralakatte, a suburb of Mangaluru, the Deccan Herald reported.
The Deccan Herald's first report on his arrest gave the explanation police heard from him for how he turned to crime. He had developed an abdominal growth that needed surgery costing about 50,000 rupees, resigned and sold land to pay for it, and then fell into money trouble. He told police he first used sleeping pills on women. One of them threatened to expose him and he returned her jewelry to settle the matter, after which, police said, he switched to cyanide so that the women could not talk.
Before the cyanide cases, Kumar had already been accused once of trying to kill a woman. Open magazine reported that he was arrested in 2003 at Dharmasthala after passersby heard a woman screaming as he tried to throw her into the Netravathi river; he was beaten by the crowd, handed to police, and later acquitted for lack of evidence. The Washington Post, in an account republished by Arab News in 2015, said he had been charged with attempted murder for pushing a woman off a bridge and was not convicted. In the High Court appeal decided in August 2026, a police sub-inspector testified that he had once arrested Kumar in a 2005 case and that Kumar was released because the woman involved did not file a complaint. Whether these describe the same incident is unclear.
The pattern that police later described, and that trial courts accepted in case after case, was consistent. Kumar sought out unmarried women, often from poor families, who had passed the age at which their families expected them to marry, or whose families could not pay a dowry. The Washington Post noted that his offer to marry without a dowry carried great weight in the region. Open reported that he watched their routines and workplaces before approaching them, and that he once told an interrogator he chose women who walked with their heads down.
He introduced himself under a series of false names. Court records and news reports list, among others, Sudhakar, Sudhakar Acharya, Sudhakar Kulal, Sudhakar Gowda, Shashidhar, Shashidhar Poojary, Ananda, Rajesh K and Sundar Rai. He presented himself variously as an insurance employee, a forest department official and an officer of public bodies, according to reports of individual trials and Open. Police recovered fake rubber stamps, letterheads, visiting cards and identity cards in several names.
Once a woman agreed to marry him, he persuaded her to leave home quietly, often wearing her gold jewelry and carrying cash. In several cases, according to the court records and reports, he said the couple would first go to a temple or perform a religious ceremony. He took her to a town several hours away, where they stayed overnight in a cheap lodge near the bus stand. The next morning he gave her a pill he said would prevent pregnancy, told her to leave her jewelry behind, and sent her to the bus stand toilet to swallow it, saying it might make her feel sick. She collapsed there. He collected the jewelry and left, and later pledged or sold the gold.
Because the women died alone, in a locked toilet in a town where no one knew them, their deaths were usually recorded as unnatural deaths or suicides. Some bodies went unidentified and were buried or cremated as unclaimed. Open reported that police at the time did not match missing person reports from the coast with bodies found at inland bus stands, and that some deaths were put down to illness or to women running away. A police officer told Open that if any of the women had refused the pill, she would have lived.
The cyanide came from a chemical dealer who sold it to him several times, believing he was a jeweler who needed it for his trade, according to Open. The dealer was arrested for selling cyanide without a license. In the trials he turned hostile, but courts relied on other evidence of the purchases, including his earlier statement before a magistrate, Open reported, and the High Court noted cyanide recovered from his shop.
The cases that reached the High Court, and those reported in detail from the sessions courts, give the clearest picture of the women and what happened to them.
In September 2005 a 32-year-old unmarried woman from Belthangady taluk, who worked with a self-help group and was active in local social organizations, left home one morning saying she was going for training. She died early the next day at the bus stand in Mysuru. A sweeper tried to give her water, but she was already dead. Prosecutors said Kumar had taken her there from B.C. Road and given her cyanide. In 2017 the High Court found that the evidence did not prove he was with her when she died, and set his murder conviction aside.
In October 2005 an anganwadi worker, a woman who ran a village child care center in Bantwal taluk, was taken to Bengaluru on a promise of marriage and died at the main bus station there, according to prosecutors. Her body was cremated as that of an unidentified person. Kumar was sentenced to death for her murder in October 2019.
In April 2006 a 26-year-old woman from near Manjeshwar in Kasaragod district, Kerala, came to Mangaluru with a relative to meet the man who had asked to marry her. He called himself Sudhakar and said he worked for an insurance company. The relative last saw her boarding a bus with him. Prosecutors said he took her to a lodge in Madikeri and gave her cyanide the next morning, then went back to Mangaluru and pledged her gold. Her death was linked to him only after his arrest.
In January 2006 a 23-year-old woman from Kasaragod district who worked at a unit of an agricultural cooperative in Mangaluru met him on her way to work. He promised to marry her and took her to Mysuru, where she collapsed in the bus stand washroom the next morning and was declared dead at a hospital.
In May 2007 a 33-year-old music teacher from Uppala in Kasaragod district died in Bengaluru after he introduced himself to her as Sudhakar Acharya of the forest department, prosecutors said.
In February 2008 a 30-year-old woman from a village in Sullia taluk, who rolled beedis for a living and belonged to a women's self-help group, left home for what she believed was a ceremony at a temple before her wedding. He had met her at a political rally in January, introduced himself as Shashidhar and proposed marriage, and her mother had agreed. That evening she telephoned her mother to say she would be back the next day. She was found collapsed at the bus stand in Mysuru. This is the case in which the High Court confirmed his death sentence.
Most of the cases reported in detail date from 2009. In April a woman from Bantwal taluk who had resigned from a job in Puttur was taken to Mysuru by a man calling himself Sudhakar Gowda and was later found dead in a bus stand washroom there. In May a beedi roller he had met at the Kumble bus stand in Kasaragod district died after he took her to Kushalnagar. In June a 22-year-old woman from Bantwal taluk died at the bus stand in Hassan. In July a 25-year-old cook at a women's hostel in Kasaragod district left home saying she was going to a temple in Sullia; when her family telephoned, a man told them the couple had married and would be back soon. She collapsed near the bus stand toilet in Bengaluru and was dead on arrival at a hospital. A constable had taken her there. In late September 2009 another woman was found dead on a bench at the Hassan bus stand, according to Open.
Some women survived. Open reported that one woman from Bantwal, taken to a lodge in Madikeri, touched the capsule to her tongue without swallowing it, collapsed in a washroom and recovered after five days in hospital; Kumar left believing she had died. She later married and became a witness. The High Court judgments of 2017 record that two surviving women testified about his methods and his false names.
The case that ended the series began in June 2009. On June 17, according to the High Court, Kumar took a 22-year-old woman by bus from B.C. Road in Bantwal taluk to Hassan, where they stayed overnight in a lodge. Early the next morning the lodge cashier saw them leave together; Kumar came back alone shortly afterward and checked out. She was found dead in a toilet at the bus stand, its door latched from inside. Her body was not identified for some time. Her brother filed a missing person complaint on June 20.
Her parents and neighbors in their village pressed the police for weeks. The Deccan Herald reported that public anger over the failure to trace her led to the formation of a special team more than a month after she disappeared. Open wrote that local police had first treated her disappearance as an elopement with a man from another community, and that the case nearly set off communal trouble in the area. Kerala Kaumudi later reported that there were threats against a police station.
The special team examined her call records. One number she had called belonged to a woman who had gone missing from Kodagu district in February 2009 and whose body had been found that month in a toilet at the Mysuru bus stand, Open reported; the dead woman's phone had been used to call the Bantwal woman. Calls traced from one victim's handset to another showed that a single man was using the phones and SIM cards of missing women, the Deccan Herald reported. Investigators followed the calls to Deralakatte. Open wrote that Kumar had given the Bantwal woman's handset to a teenage nephew, and that when police traced the phone, the boy said his uncle had given it to him.
Dakshina Kannada police arrested Kumar on October 21, 2009, at Deralakatte. Gopal Hosur, the inspector general of police for the Western Range, told the Deccan Herald that he appeared to have acted alone. Police said they found eight cyanide tablets, four mobile phones and the missing woman's jewelry, and gold jewelry at his house. The High Court record also lists cyanide, fake rubber stamps and identity cards in various names recovered from the house of his second wife, and gold he had pledged with two finance companies.
Within a day police said he had been linked to 18 young women who died after he lured them with offers of marriage, five of them from Kasaragod in Kerala, and that a separate team would examine the Kerala cases. A week later the Deccan Herald reported that he had admitted to Mysuru police that he had killed nine women in that city alone. According to a Washington Post account republished in 2015, police said he kept a diary of the women he had approached, marking in red the names of those who turned him down, and that he succeeded with about two of every ten.
Several families were shown photographs after the arrest. In the case of the Kasaragod cook who died in Bengaluru in July 2009, her sister recognized him from photographs and filed a complaint, after which the state Criminal Investigation Department took over the case, PTI reported. Open wrote that the Corps of Detectives took charge of the wider investigation and used the pattern of linked calls to match missing person files to the bodies found at bus stands.
One woman, who left home in November 2006 and was found dead at the temple town of Kollur, had been buried as though she had died of illness, Open reported, and her body was exhumed after her family protested. Her case too was later charged against Kumar. It ended in acquittal.
The cases were registered as separate sessions cases and tried one by one in Mangaluru. The first three, all decided in December 2013, were heard by B.K. Naik, judge of the Fourth Additional District and Sessions Court for Dakshina Kannada. Kumar conducted his own defense. Open reported that the trial in the June 2009 case was held in camera, that the prosecution called 49 witnesses, and that its evidence included phone records, the surviving woman from Madikeri, the chemical dealer and a temple priest. The priest testified that Kumar had asked him to perform a ritual to cleanse him of murder; he refused and later told the police. Kumar's main argument was that no post-mortem report had mentioned cyanide.
Judge Naik convicted Kumar in all three cases, in judgments dated December 17 and 18, 2013, and sentenced him to death in each; the High Court records give the date of the sentencing orders as December 21, 2013. The cases concerned the 22-year-old woman who died in Hassan in June 2009, the 30-year-old beedi roller who died in Mysuru in February 2008, and the 32-year-old woman who died in Mysuru in September 2005. In each he was also convicted of rape, abduction, robbery, administering poison, cheating and destroying evidence. The judge called the Hassan case one of the "rarest of rare," PTI reported, the standard Indian courts apply before imposing death. The trial court listed 13 aggravating factors, among them that Kumar had been a public servant and that he faced 20 similar cases. By October 2017, according to PTI, trial courts had convicted him in four cases, with death sentences in three and a life sentence in the fourth.
Death sentences in India must be confirmed by a High Court, so all three went to a division bench of the Karnataka High Court, Justices Ravi Malimath and John Michael Cunha, together with Kumar's own appeals. He argued them in person. Asianet News reported an exchange during the hearing of the Mysuru case of February 2008, in which Kumar claimed the woman had swallowed pesticide and that police had altered the forensic report after his arrest. The judges noted that he had been arrested about a year and a half after her post-mortem examination, asked how a report naming cyanide could have been prepared in advance to frame him, and asked him why every woman who came into contact with him had died.
The three appeals ended differently.
On October 12, 2017, in the Hassan case of June 2009, the court upheld his convictions for murder, administering poison, robbery, cheating and forgery offenses. It acquitted him of rape and abduction, finding no medical evidence of sexual assault and no proof of an intent to compel marriage; it called the crime a murder for gain. The court accepted the evidence of the lodge staff, the recovery of the woman's pledged gold, cyanide and false identity cards, and his confession to a temple priest, and held that cyanide caused her death even though the first medical opinion had pointed to an organophosphorus compound and the viscera had not been preserved. Because the rape and abduction convictions fell, it set aside the death sentence. It still described Kumar as "a hardened criminal and a serial killer," and ordered imprisonment for life "till the end of his life without any remission."
On October 24, 2017, in the Mysuru case of September 2005, the court set aside his convictions for murder, rape, abduction, administering poison and cheating. It held that the prosecution had not shown that he was with the woman when she died: the witnesses who saw them together had done so months earlier, the lodge receptionist and room attendant turned hostile, and no lodge register was produced. The court found it proved that gold jewelry identified by her father and brother was recovered from the house of Kumar's second wife, and it confirmed his conviction for robbery under section 392, but held that possession of the gold alone did not prove murder. The death sentence fell with the murder conviction.
On November 15, 2017, in the Mysuru case of February 2008, the court upheld his convictions for murder, administering poison, robbery causing hurt, and cheating, and acquitted him of rape, abduction and destroying evidence. The chemical analysis had found cyanide in October 2008, a year before anyone suspected him; the lodge receptionist and room attendant placed him with the woman; a jeweler testified that Kumar had sold him her ornaments; and two surviving women described his methods. The court weighed his family circumstances and gave them little weight. "He is not a first offender but proved to be a maniac and serial killer," the judgment said. It confirmed the death sentence.
The other cases went before the Sixth Additional District and Sessions Court in Mangaluru, first under Judge D.T. Puttarangaswamy and later under Judge Sayeedunnisa, with Judith O.M. Crasta as public prosecutor in most of them. Kumar appeared by video link from Hindalga Central Prison in Belagavi, according to reports from 2019. The verdicts were reported one at a time in the Karnataka and Kerala press, and the running counts that accompanied them do not always agree.
In February 2018, The News Minute reported a life sentence in what it called his fifth conviction, for the death of a woman from Bantwal at the Hassan bus stand in September 2009. Udayavani reported a conviction in the case of the woman who died in Mysuru after meeting "Sudhakar Gowda," calling it his sixth, with 14 cases still pending. Judge Puttarangaswamy then sentenced him to life imprisonment in two cases on the same day, those of a 34-year-old woman from Kedila in Bantwal taluk who was taken to a lodge in Madikeri and a 32-year-old woman from Peraje taken to Mysuru. "Mohan's guilt has been conclusively proved in both the cases," the judge said, according to Udayavani, which counted nine cases sentenced: three with death sentences and six with life terms. In October 2018 Asianet News reported a further life sentence for the death of a 20-year-old woman from Puttur whom he had offered a job, and in February 2019 the Deccan Herald reported his conviction in the case of a 25-year-old woman from Peraje.
On January 29, 2019, the Sixth Additional Sessions Court acquitted him in the Kollur case of November 2006, in which prosecutors said he had used the name Rajesh K. The court held that the charges were not proved.
The convictions resumed that summer. In July 2019 Judge Sayeedunnisa sentenced him to imprisonment until his last breath, without remission, for the death of the 26-year-old woman from near Manjeshwar; 41 witnesses had testified. The Deccan Herald called it his 17th case. In September 2019 she convicted him in the case of the Uppala music teacher after hearing 38 witnesses, which PTI reported as his 16th conviction.
On October 22, 2019, the court convicted him in the case of the anganwadi worker from Bantwal taluk, and on October 24 it sentenced him to death for her murder, with concurrent prison terms for abduction, rape, poisoning, robbery, cheating and destroying evidence. The prosecutor said the terms would run concurrently until the High Court confirmed the death sentence. The judge ordered the district legal services authority to pay compensation to the woman's younger sister. PTI, in a report printed by The Week and The Quint, said it was the fourth murder case in which he had been sentenced to death and that he had now been convicted in 17 murder cases, with three still on trial.
On November 22, 2019, the court convicted him in the case of the beedi roller from Kasaragod district who died after he took her to Kushalnagar in May 2009, and that week sentenced him to death, ETV Bharat and Udayavani reported. The court had examined 47 witnesses. Udayavani called it his fifth death sentence and said he had been convicted in 18 of the 20 cases.
In February 2020 Judge Sayeedunnisa sentenced him to life imprisonment and a fine of 25,000 rupees in the case of the 23-year-old cooperative worker who died in Mysuru in January 2006, the 19th of 20 cases, ordering that the term begin only after his other sentences. In June 2020 she convicted him in the 20th and last case, that of the hostel cook who died in Bengaluru in July 2009, and on June 24 sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder, with further terms for abduction, poisoning, rape and robbery. A pendant from the woman's jewelry had been found at his second wife's house, and the court ordered it returned to her mother. PTI reported at the time that he had received death sentences in five cases and life sentences in three before that verdict, and that two of the death sentences had been commuted.
Kumar was convicted by trial courts in many separate murder cases between 2013 and 2020; the exact number depends on which report is used, and no reported court document gives a total. The High Court confirmed one death sentence, commuted one to life without remission, and set aside one murder conviction. He was acquitted in the Kollur case, and that acquittal was upheld. No High Court ruling on the death sentences imposed in October and November 2019, and no ruling of the Supreme Court of India in any of his cases, had been reported by October 2026.
The state appealed the Kollur acquittal. On August 17, 2026, a division bench of the Karnataka High Court, Justices H.P. Sandesh and B. Pramod, dismissed the appeal. The prosecution had examined 53 witnesses. The court found no definite medical evidence that the woman died of cyanide; the doctor said only that she might have, and the forensic report was unclear. Her brother admitted that until 2009 he had suspected other people, not Kumar. Witnesses from the guest house contradicted each other, a temple priest identified Kumar only after investigators showed him a photograph, and the sale of her jewelry was not reliably proved. The prosecution had described Kumar as a serial cyanide killer, and the court said that description had not been substantiated in this case. Where two views of the evidence were possible, it held, the benefit went to the accused. The judgment records that Kumar was in custody.
On October 25, 2015, police in Bali, Indonesia, arrested an Indian man who had flown in from Sydney on a passport in the name of Mohan Kumar. The Associated Press and other foreign outlets reported that the man was "Cyanide Mohan," and the Washington Post published an account of the cyanide case under the belief that he had fled India after his 2013 death sentences. Kumar had never left prison. The News Minute pointed out the same day that he had been held at Hindalga jail in Belagavi since his conviction, and reported that India's Central Bureau of Investigation and Home Ministry confirmed that the man arrested in Bali was the gangster Chhota Rajan. PTI reported that Rajan had arrived in Sydney on a passport in the name of Mohan Kumar.
The families of the women had waited months or years to learn what had happened. The Onmanorama news site described in 2023 the family of the hostel cook from Kasaragod district who died in Bengaluru in July 2009, the case that became his 20th trial. She was one of six daughters of a carpenter who had died in 2000. In the days before the arrest, police took two of her sisters to a station for questioning about missing women; on October 23, 2009, police showed them a photograph of her body. The family never recovered the body. Their mother had a stroke when she learned of the death and did not recover. Neighbors shunned the family, and for nine years no marriage proposals came for three of the sisters, who married in 2018 on a cooperative bank loan that the family was still repaying in 2023. They said they had received no government compensation. One sister told Onmanorama that Kumar admitted to her, during a meeting at the Mangaluru court complex, that he had killed her sister.
The sessions courts ordered compensation through the district legal services authority in several of the later cases: to the younger sister of the anganwadi worker in 2019, and to the mother of the cooperative worker in 2020.
The Amazon Prime Video series Dahaad (2023), with Vijay Varma as its killer, was widely compared to the case; The News Minute noted at its release in May 2023 that the makers had not confirmed it was based on Kumar, while Scroll later described Dahaad as inspired by the case. A review in South Asian Herald in October 2025 said the Hindi film Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas, released on ZEE5, was adapted from the case. The Malayalam film Kalamkaval, directed by Jithin K. Jose with Mammootty as a serial killer and Vinayakan as the police officer pursuing him, reached theaters in December 2025; Scroll wrote that it borrows from the Cyanide Mohan case, and Kerala Kaumudi reported that its release revived public discussion of the killings.
Kumar remains in prison. Reports from 2019 placed him at Hindalga Central Prison in Belagavi, and the High Court's judgment of August 17, 2026, records that he is in custody. Kerala Kaumudi reported in December 2025 that the death sentence had not been carried out. No mercy petition or transfer had been reported as of October 2026.
Proven by final High Court judgment: the murder of the beedi roller from Sullia taluk in Mysuru in February 2008 (death sentence confirmed), and the murder of the 22-year-old woman from Bantwal taluk in Hassan in June 2009 (life without remission). In both, the High Court acquitted him of rape and abduction.
Overturned: his conviction for the murder of the 32-year-old woman from Belthangady taluk in Mysuru in September 2005. Only a robbery conviction stands.
Acquitted: the Kollur case of November 2006, at trial in 2019 and on the state's appeal in 2026.
Trial court convictions not known to have been reviewed: the other cases decided between 2018 and 2020, including the death sentences of October and November 2019. Their appeal status was not reported.
Totals: police said at his arrest that he was linked to 18 women and later that he had admitted nine deaths in Mysuru alone. Prosecutors brought about 20 cases. Some reports give 21 or 22 linked women, and police were quoted in 2018 and 2019 as suspecting as many as 32; Kerala Kaumudi wrote in 2025 that he had claimed more than 30. None of the higher figures has been tested in court, and they should be read as police attributions or unverified claims, not findings.
Counts of convictions and sentences: reports between 2018 and 2025 give inconsistent tallies, including 17 convictions by October 2019; 18 of 20 by November 2019; five death sentences and three life sentences before June 2020; death sentences in four cases and life in 15 (Onmanorama, 2023); guilty in all but five cases (The News Minute, 2023); and death in six cases and life in 14 (Kerala Kaumudi, 2025). Those counts cannot all be right, and the 2019 acquittal and the 2017 reversal show that the common claim of 20 convictions in 20 cases is not accurate.
Earlier accusations: the 2003 Dharmasthala incident ended in acquittal, by Open's account; a 2005 police case was dropped because no complaint was filed.
2003: arrested at Dharmasthala, accused of trying to throw a woman into the Netravathi river; later acquitted (Open).
September 2005: a 32-year-old woman from Belthangady taluk dies at the Mysuru bus stand (his murder conviction for her death is later overturned).
October 2005: an anganwadi worker from Bantwal taluk dies at the main bus station in Bengaluru.
January 2006: a 23-year-old cooperative worker from Kasaragod district dies at the Mysuru bus stand.
April 2006: a 26-year-old woman from near Manjeshwar dies after being taken to Madikeri.
November 2006: a woman dies at Kollur (case later ends in acquittal).
May 2007: a 33-year-old music teacher from Uppala dies in Bengaluru.
February 2008: a 30-year-old beedi roller from Sullia taluk dies at the Mysuru bus stand.
April to September 2009: several more women die at bus stands in Mysuru, Kushalnagar, Hassan and Bengaluru.
June 17 and 18, 2009: a 22-year-old woman from Bantwal taluk travels to Hassan with him and dies at the bus stand; her brother reports her missing on June 20.
October 21, 2009: arrested at Deralakatte near Mangaluru.
October 2009: police link him to 18 women; he admits nine deaths in Mysuru, police say.
December 17 to 21, 2013: convicted in three cases by Judge B.K. Naik and sentenced to death in each.
October 12, 2017: High Court commutes the Hassan death sentence to life without remission.
October 24, 2017: High Court sets aside the murder conviction in the September 2005 case.
November 15, 2017: High Court confirms the death sentence in the February 2008 case.
2018: further convictions and life sentences in Mangaluru.
January 29, 2019: acquitted in the Kollur case.
July 2019: life until death without remission in the Manjeshwar case.
September 2019: convicted in the Uppala case.
October 24, 2019: sentenced to death in the anganwadi worker's case.
November 2019: sentenced to death in the Kushalnagar case.
February 2020: life sentence in the 19th case.
June 24, 2020: life sentence in the 20th and last case.
May 2023: Dahaad released.
October to December 2025: Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas and Kalamkaval released.
August 17, 2026: High Court upholds the Kollur acquittal; he remains in custody.