MD, CEO hacked to death inside private firm office in Bengaluru; ex-colleague prime suspect

Police have identified Joker Felix, a social media influencer, as the prime suspect in the gruesome murder.

The managing director and the CEO of a private fibrenet company were brutally murdered at their office in northeastern Bengaluru on Tuesday afternoon, sending shockwaves through the city.

Police believe the murders were the fallout of a rivalry among small broadband companies in Bengaluru.

Phanindra Subramanya, the MD of Aironics Media Pvt Ltd, and Vinu Kumar, the CEO, were attacked with sharp weapons by a three-member gang at the company’s office in Pampa Extension, Hebbal Kempapura, around 3.35 pm, according to police and eyewitness accounts.

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The key suspect is Joker Felix, who claims to be a Kannada rapper and has more than 16,000 followers on Instagram, police sources said. Curiously, a media report of the double murder was posted on Felix’s Instagram account around 8.30 pm, about five hours after the incident.

Police believe that Felix and two other men reached Aironics’ office on two scooters around 3.15 pm. The trio waited outside the gate for the arrival of Subramanya, who had stepped out for lunch. As soon as Subramanya came, the men walked with him into the four-storey building. Subramanya and the group had a small talk, and he led him to his office on the first floor. As the four men sat inside Subramanya’s 10X8 cabin, one of them got to his feet to lock the door from the inside. Even before Subramanya could figure out what had happened, the men pulled out a machete and a dagger from a bag they had carried. The group then unleashed a vicious attack on Subramanya, gashing him in the head, face, neck and torso. Subramanya’s screams drew Kumar and about nine employees who ran upstairs from the ground floor. “Subramanya’s cabin was locked from the outside, and they were viciously attacking him. I just froze,” a network engineer working for the company told DH.

Kumar grabbed a fire extinguisher and smashed it at the cabin. The network engineer threw a laptop. Others threw chairs in order to repel the attackers but nothing worked. Two other employees ran out to call the police. Some locked the ground-floor gate to prevent the attackers from fleeings. The attackers then hurried out and tried to attack other staff members. While all employees managed to run to safety, Kumar was unlucky because he ran down the internal staircase. The group followed him there. One of them pierced the dagger into the back of Kumar’s head. Their job done, the group escaped through a second door that the staff had forgotten to lock from the outside, the engineer said. Raman Gupta, Additional Commissioner of Police (East), said four police teams had been formed to investigate the case. Another senior police officer said they had identified at least two assailants. Police sources identified a second suspect as Santosh. Police sources said Felix worked for Gnet Broadband. The rivalry began after Subramanya and Kumar founded their own company in November 2022 and offered broadband plans at throwaway prices, impacting Gnet’s business.