Overview

• The Fourth Additional District and Sessions Court convicted 50-year-old Battina Appalaraju of murder and imposed the death penalty under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code
• Judges also levied a ₹10,000 fine after finding that Appalaraju had hacked the victims with a harvesting scythe during a pre-dawn assault in V. Juttada village
• Appalaraju surrendered to Pendurthi police immediately after the killings, bringing to a close a four-year legal process that included multiple hearings
• Prosecutors traced the motive to a personal vendetta arising from Appalaraju’s 2018 rape complaint against neighbour Vijay Kiran, a feud that residents say fueled extreme rural violence
• The sentence is now subject to appeal and further judicial scrutiny under India’s ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine for capital punishment