Bengaluru: The high court Tuesday dismissed the bail petition of Dr Mahendra Reddy, who is facing charges of murdering his wife Dr Kruthika Reddy by administering an overdose of anaesthesia.The case came to light in Oct last year, nearly six months after Kruthika’s death. A forensic report detected traces of an overdose of anaesthesia in her organs, prompting police to arrest Reddy, a gastro-surgeon, on suspicion of murdering Kruthika in April 2025. Since his arrest, Dr Reddy has been in judicial custody at Bengaluru Central Prison. Lower courts rejected his bail petitions.On July 3, police filed an additional chargesheet before the trial court, placing more materials collected during the course of investigation.Special public prosecutor P Prasanna Kumar said the investigating team had collected substantial material indicating that Kruthika was allegedly administered 20ml of Propofol through an intravenous (IV) line, resulting in her death.“After the offence and eight days before his arrest, the accused had searched an article, ‘Postmortem Propofol Levels: A case of Residual Detection Long After Administration’, and saved it in his mobile phone. It was discovered after retrieval of data by the FSL team from his phone. The accused himself being a surgeon was aware that the half life of propofol is 2 to 4 minutes and terminal phase is 3 to 12 hours after administration into the body. He was curious to know whether the anaesthetic drug would get detected after its terminal phase. This was a major evidence on the basis of which his bail plea was rejected,” Kumar explained.
