Brazilian man, guilty of killing Hyderabad woman in UK, sent to mental hospital

A Brazilian man, who was found guilty of murdering an Indian woman in the United Kingdom, was sentenced to detention in a mental hospital, reported The Times of India.

The sentence was announced by the court when the man pleaded guilty of murdering the Indian woman from Hyderabad and attempting to murder her roommate in Wembley.

24-year-old Kevin Lourenco de Morals attacked Hyderabad woman Kontham Tejasvini on June 13 last year. After murdering her, Morals called his girlfriend and said, “I have killed the Indian females.” Shortly after the attack, he was arrested by the police who tracked his phone location data.

After a trial lasting over six months, Kevin pled guilty of murdering Tejasvini (27) and attempting to murder her roommate Akhila Janagama (now 29).

Judge Martin Edmunds handed down the Mental Health Act Section 37/41 hospital and restrictions order in the Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday, saying that the defendant was not in sound mind when he attacked the two women, reported TOI.

The judge said while announcing the sentence that Kevin Lourenco de Morals had paranoid schizophrenia and had experienced a relapse into a psychotic episode when he carried out the attacks. The defendant was then sent to the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham.

Kontham Tejasvini had moved to London from Hyderabad on a student visa in 2020, to pursue a master’s degree in computer science at Greenwich University. She later landed a job as a team leader in Wembley.

She met her roommate Janagama in March 2023, and they moved into a house-share property together. De Morals and his girlfriend also lived there. The Indian women and the couple had no previous interaction before the attack on June 13, 2023.

Kevin, who had a past of mental illness, had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication and said that he had attacked the women as he acted on the orders of the “voices he heard”.