NRI Praveen Mandanapu,32
face murder charges in the death of his wife, Divya
Washington, Jun 23, 2004
Rajesh KhannaPolice said they've dealt before with a Loudoun County, Va., woman whose body was found on Monday and her husband, who's accused of killing her.
The sheriff's office said deputies went to the home of Praveen Mandanapu,32, and his 28-year-old wife, Divya, at least once for a domestic dispute.
Court records obtained by The Washington Post show that a Loudoun judge issued an emergency protective order last October against Divya Mandanapu after finding there was evidence that she had abused her husband.
Divya Mandanapu's dismembered body was found Monday in a suitcase inside a trash bin in South Riding. Police were unsure of her identity until Wednesday, when her coworkers at a bank reported her missing.
Authorities say Praveen Mandanapu, 32, software engineer from Andhra Pradesh will be charged in the dismemberment death of this wife.
Praveen Mandanapu was arrested Thursday, a day after a deputy found him slumped over the wheel of his car on Route 7 in Clarke County.
Investigators say he may have been trying to kill himself.
Praveen Mandanapu, 32, was arrested in Winchester Wednesday night and charged with first-degree murder after 77 hours of detective work, Simpson said.
The sheriff said there are still a lot of unknowns in the case, such as how the victim died - whether she was alive when she was dismembered. The cause of death will not be known until after autopsy by the state medical examiner's office in Fairfax have not come in, Simpson said. No murder weapon was recovered from the couple's home, a possible motive is not yet known, and parts of her body have yet to be recovered, Simpson said.
Divya Mandanapu, who emigrated to Loudoun from India with her husband five years ago, was reported missing around noon Wednesday when her employer, a bank in Leesburg, phoned police saying she hadn't come to work all week.
Deputies became suspicious when they were unable to locate her husband at the couple's residence on Ashburn's Buckley Terrace.
Although Divya Mandanapu's body was found on Monday, police could not identify her until Wednesday Simpson said. Between the photo given to deputies by the employer and the artist's composite sketch of the body, investigators figured the woman missing was the woman who was found in the suitcase, Simpson said.
Investigators decided around 11 p.m. Wednesday night they had enough evidence to charge her husband. The sheriff's SWAT team raided his home but he was not there.
Meanwhile, in nearby Clarke County, an emergency call was placed Wednesday afternoon about an unconscious man in a car on the median of Route 7 headed east toward Loudoun, according to Clarke County Sheriff Anthony Roper. A Clarke deputy responded along with emergency personnel, and the man was taken to Winchester Hospital with no obvious injuries.
It wasn't until that same Clarke deputy went back to the Sheriff's office and flipped on the television to the 11 o' clock news that he realized the man at Winchester Hospital was the same one wanted for murdering his wife. The suspect's picture flashed on the screen, and the deputy began to notice familiarities between the picture and the unconscious man, Roper said.
The deputy notified other authorities, and Loudoun County Sheriff's deputies along with other members of law enforcement took the suspect, Praveen Mandanapu, into custody around 1 a.m.
"Within minutes, we were able to secure him at the hospital," Simpson said.
Clues are still being divulged from two Dumpsters taken from the scene where the body was discovered. Investigators believe the suitcase in which the woman's body was stuffed into was thrown into a dumpster at The Abbey at Devon sometime after noon on June 11, the last time the trash had been taken out, Simpson said. The residence is also cordoned off, and investigators are combing each room for clues.
"We've been looking in a lot of areas," he said.
Simpson also revealed that authorites had a stroke of good luck in finding Divya Mandanapu's body. As the deputy pulled into the parking lot near the Dumpster, a trash truck followed for its regular Monday pickup. As the driver lined up to lift the box, a deputy stepped in to stop the maneuver, Simpson said.
Residents at The Abbey at Devon were horrified when learning a body was discovered where they live.
Rosa Harris, who has lived for two years in the complex of three-story apartment buildings in South Riding - off U.S. 50 south of Dulles International Airport - was just one of many residents who expressed their dismay.
"I freaked out," she said. "We never think that something like that will happen in our neighborhood."
Divya’s father Satyanarayana, a retired Bharat Petroleum employee, has lodged a complaint with the police in Vijayawada. He alleges that soon after the marriage, Praveen started torturing his wife for dowry. Things, he said, improved after he paid Praveen Rs 9 lakh. Subsequently, Praveen forced Satyanarayana to get his second daughter Dipti married to his younger brother Rajesh. Within days, the family started harassing Dipti too, demanding an equal amount in dowry.
Satyanarayana said, he had paid Praveen the first instalment of Rs 2 lakh and sought some time to pay the rest but the harassment continued till finally Dipti left for her father’s house.
Satyanarayana said he was trying to raise Rs 2 lakh more to give to the family when news of his elder daughter’s death reached him. He says Praveen must have killed Divya for the delay in getting the dowry.
Meanwhile, Rajesh and his mother have flown to Muscat where Praveen’s father works.