3 min readHyderabadUpdated: Jul 9, 2026 06:03 AM IST
A bitter-tasting smoothie, a secret girlfriend and murder made to look like suicide – that’s what police in Bellevue, Washington, say they uncovered in a nine-month investigation into the death of a 27-year-old Hyderabad woman in her apartment. They have now arrested her 30-year-old software engineer husband for the killing.
On June 27, Secunderabad native N. Avinash was arrested on charges of murdering his wife, Rajita Sabbineni, and produced in court there on July 1. Investigators claim Avinash strangled his wife on October 27, 2025, and tried to make it look like suicide. Police claim the investigation that followed showed that Avinash, currently unemployed, had been having an affair with a woman he met before he married Rajita.
According to police, Avinash had been in a relationship with the woman but didn’t tell his parents, who arranged his marriage to Rajita, who also had a US work visa. Police claim his girlfriend also attended the wedding on June 5 last year.
Investigators claim it was only later that Rajita discovered that although Avinash claimed to work for a multinational technology company, he had lost his job. In text messages she sent her husband days before she died, she complained that the smoothies he made for her “with love” tasted bitter, sometimes like cough syrup. It’s as yet unclear if anything was mixed in them.
According to police, on the day of her death on October 27, Avinash called the police himself, claiming that Rajita had locked herself in the bathroom. He also told officers that he was not home when she entered the bathroom.
While the case was initially treated as a suicide, investigators allegedly came to believe she had been murdered, finding that only he had access to the apartment. Avinash, who remains in custody on a USD 5 million bond, later allegedly admitted to sending a photo of his wife’s body to his girlfriend.
According to investigators, his mobile phone records showed he called his girlfriend at least four times on the day Rajita died.
