Hyderabad: Driven by mounting debts from online gambling and betting, a 29-year-old driver allegedly killed two women in Hyderabad, offering them lifts before strangling them for their gold and dumping their bodies on the city’s outskirts.Jubilee Hills police apprehended K Vasu, who worked as a driver for a doctor, after connecting two missing-person cases that led to the recovery of decomposed bodies from separate locations. During interrogation, Vasu reportedly confessed to murdering the women in his car and stealing their jewellery to repay his loans.Vasu, a native of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, first targeted 70-year-old Yadamma, a resident of Film Nagar, on March 11. He knew her as she cooked at functions and allegedly noticed her wearing gold jewellery, prompting him to plan the crime.“Vasu was habituated to online gambling and betting and had borrowed over Rs1 lakh. To clear his debts, he was looking for an opportunity. When he saw Yadamma with jewellery, he decided to kill her and steal the gold. As per the plan, he offered to pick her up in the evening and drop her home,” said an investigator.He later picked her up in a friend’s car and drove toward Gandipet on the pretext of attending to personal work. At an isolated spot near the Greyhounds compound, he allegedly strangled her with a rope and stole her jewellery. However, he later realised most of it was imitation, managing to get only Rs 18,000 by pledging the ear studs. Yadamma’s family filed a missing-person complaint on March 19.Days later, on March 14, Vasu struck again. This time, he targeted 56-year-old Jayamma, a domestic worker living near his employer’s residence. Offering her a lift, he reportedly attacked her inside the doctor’s car.“As she sat in the front passenger seat, Vasu moved to the back seat and suddenly strangled her using a rope. After committing the murder, he stole her gold jewellery and dumped the body at an isolated place in Indra Reddy Nagar at Mokila. He obtained Rs 22,000 by pledging Jayamma’s gold jewellery,” said a Jubilee Hills police official. Her family lodged a complaint the next day.Investigators tracked the accused using CCTV footage and phone data analysis. Coordinating with Cyberabad and Future City police, they linked the missing-person cases to unidentified bodies recovered in Narsingi and Mokila. One body had been buried after DNA preservation, while the other remains in the morgue.Police are likely to formally declare Vasu’s arrest on Tuesday.
