Cough syrup, 4 calls to ‘girlfriend in India’: Engineer husband charged with murder 8 months after wife found dead in US home
30-year-old Avinash Narne, an Indian software development engineer working in the US, has been charged with the murder of his wife, nine months after she was found dead in their Bellevue home in Washington State. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office charged Avinash Narne, 30, with one count of first-degree murder on July 1. Narne remains in custody on $5 million bail and his arraignment is set for July 7.After months of investigation, prosecutors now alleged that it was a pre-planned murder and Narne who had a secret relationship with a woman in India, staged a crime scene after strangling his wife to death.
What happened on the night of October 27, 2025?
Narne called the police on the night of October 27 and reported that his wife was locked in the bathroom and was not coming out. When officers arrived at the apartment in the 13700 block of Northeast 10th Street, they had to break into the bathroom, where they found 27-year-old Raajitha Sabbineni on the floor. She died at the scene.The King County Medical Examiner’s Office identified Sabbineni and ruled her death a homicide. Medical examiners determined she died from asphyxia due to strangulation.
What Narne told the police
Narne told the police that they got married on June 5, 2025 and moved in together in July. He said he left the apartment to run errands and returned after 40 minutes when he found Sabbineni in the bathroom.
What investigators found
Investigators went through the smart lock data and found that Narne indeed went outside, but no one else had been inside the home when Narne was out. Investigators said Narne had a secret relationship with another woman in India which started before his marriage to Sabbinenu. The second woman reportedly even attended their wedding and their communications continued after Narne’s marriage.Narne called this woman in India at least four times on the day of Sabbineni’s death, including around the time when he claimed he was trying to enter the bathroom. When the detectives asked him about the messages that he sent and later deleted to this woman in India, Narne said he sent a photo of Sabbineni’s bodyThe court document also described messages in which Sabbineni complained multiple times before the day she died that her drinks, apparently made by her husband, tasted bitter. On the day she died, detectives wrote, she told the husband a smoothie he made tasted like “medicine” and “cough syrup.”The court document mentioned that Narne told them that he was working with Amazon. For the last eight months, Narne was a free man.
