Umesh Reddy

Umesh Reddy (born 1969) is a serial rapist and serial killer from India.

He confessed to killing 18 women, and was convicted in 9 cases.

The police believe that he raped at least 20 women in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

They also suspect that several of his crimes have not been reported, because the victims feared social stigma.

Umesh Reddy was born BA Umesh in 1969, in Basappa Malige, a village in Chitradurga district, Karnataka.

After being selected in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir.

While on duty as a guard at the house of a commandant, he attempted to rape the commandant's daughter.

He then fled to Chitradurga district.

In 1996, he managed to join the District Armed Reserve (DAR) Police, who were not aware of his background in CRPF.

Reddy had been charged in a road rage incident, but the local DAR inspector chose to ignore this "petty case".

Reddy completed his police training in Madhya Pradesh, and then returned to Karnataka.

Reddy carefully selected his victims.

He usually targeted housewives between 11 am and 3 pm, when there would be no men at home.

He would gain entry into the victims' house on the pretext of asking for water or an address.

He then threatened them with a knife, forced them to remove their clothes, tied them up, and raped them.

He often choked his victims, and raped them while they were unconscious.

After the rape, Reddy killed his victims, and removed their jewelry to make the crime appear like a robbery.

He then escaped with the victim's undergarments.

Reddy was found wearing women's lingerie under his clothes, whenever the police arrested him.

In November 1996, Reddy attempted to rape a high school girl, who was walking at KEB Colony in Chitradurga.

The girl hit him with a stone, and managed to escape.

On 6 December 1996, Reddy allegedly raped and murdered 16-year old Roopa, when she was returning to her house in the same locality.

The next month, he was arrested and dismissed from service, when his first victim identified him at a Republic Day police parade by chance.

In March 1997, while the Chitradurga police were handing him over to the Bellary prison authorities, Reddy escaped.

He then killed an income tax officer's wife in Bangalore, a girl in Ahmedabad, two girls in Baroda and a widow in Kunigal.

Reddy would steal lingerie put up for drying in the backyards of houses.

On 7 July 1997, he was arrested by Peenya police for stealing women's undergarments.

When the police raided his room, they recovered a gunny bag full of lingerie.

At the time of his arrest in Peenya, he told the police that his name was "Ramesh".

Reddy escaped within 24 hours, while being transferred to the MICO Layout police station for interrogation in another case.

The police initially tried to hush up his escape, but Reddy's father filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court.

Two police personnel were then suspended, and a lookout notice was issued in the name of Ramesh.

On 28 February 1998, Reddy raped and murdered 37-year-old widow Jayashree Maradi Subbaiah in Peenya.

The police believe that he repeatedly had sex with the dead body.

When her 8-year-old son Suresh returned from school, he saw Reddy in his house.

Reddy told the boy that an evil spirit had entered his mother's body, so he had tied her to the window grill.

Reddy, along with four others, was charged with Roopa's murder, and remanded to judicial custody (later, in 2004, he was acquitted in this case due to lack of sufficient evidence).

A court asked him to be shifted to Bellary jail.

The Karnataka High Court sentenced Reddy to death in 2009, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court of India in 2011.

After Reddy filed a mercy petition, the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to a 30-year sentence in 2022.