Brazilian man sent to mental hospital after admitting killing Hyderabad woman, attempting to kill another

LONDON: A Brazilian man has been sentenced to detention in a mental hospital after pleading guilty to stabbing to death one Indian woman from Hyderabad and attempting to murder her roommate in a house-share in Wembley.

After the attack on June 13 last year, Keven Lourenco de Morais (24) phoned his girlfriend and said: “I have killed the Indian females.” Police arrested him at 6.20 pm after tracking him down using phone location data. On Feb 6 he pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility of Tejaswini Kontham, then 27, and guilty to the attempted murder of Akhila Janagama, now 29.

Judge Martin Edmunds handed down the Mental Health Act Section 37/41 hospital and restriction orders at Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday as family of the victims and of the defendant sat at opposite ends of the court. He said the defendant had paranoid schizophrenia and had experienced a relapse into a psychotic episode when he carried out the attacks.

De Morais did not react as he was sent to Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham.

The court heard Kontham moved to London in 2020 from Hyderabad on a student visa to read a master’s in computer science at Greenwich University. After that she landed a job as team leader at a restaurant in Wembley.

She met Janagama in March 2023 and they got on well as they both spoke Telugu. They became roommates in a house of multiple occupation, where they shared the kitchen and bathroom but had their own locked bedroom. De Morais and his girlfriend also lived there.

Just before 10am on June 13, Janagama heard a loud noise and went to investigate and saw Kontham lying on the kitchen floor, screaming, with De Morais standing over her. He saw Janagama and ran towards her and repeatedly stabbed her. She managed to lock herself in her room and call 999 as De Morais fled. When emergency services arrived, they found Kontham gravely injured, and she was pronounced dead. Janagama underwent surgery in hospital.

De Morais had stopped taking anti-psychotic medication around a week before the attack “on instructions from the voices he heard”, the court heard.

“There had been no particular interaction between the defendant and two young women prior to that morning,” William Emlyn Jones, prosecuting, said.

Janagama watched proceedings online from India, where she has returned to live. She told the court she had permanent scars and had been left traumatised. She had gone to London to earn money to look after her parents and taken out a huge educational loan. Back in India she was unable to find work and had not got any compensation from the govt.

“I have sleepless nights and keep thinking about if I could have saved my friend,” she said.

Kontham’s cousin, Shiva Namashivaya, said Kontham had been working in the UK to earn money to send back to her parents in India and her wedding was going to be the next big family occasion.

Eloïse Marshall, mitigating, said De Morais had expressed deep regret and shame.