It was one of the most brutal scenes police officers in Maple Shade had ever seen. Blood was everywhere, and a mother and her six-year-old son were dead.
“The scene that day was unimaginable,” Maple Shade Police Chief Christopher Fletcher said Tuesday.
Sasikala Narra, 38, and Anish Narra, 6, were killed in 2017 in their Fox Meadows Apartment. They were found by Sasikala’s husband and Anish’s father, Hanumanth Narra.
For eight years, the search for their killer had seemed to go cold. But out of public view, investigators in Maple Shade, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office and FBI were tracking down a suspect halfway across the globe based on a single droplet of blood found amidst the crimson pools at the scene.
On Tuesday, authorities said they charged Nazeer Hameed, a 38-year-old Indian national, with two counts of first-degree murder earlier this year.
In announcing the charges against Hameed, authorities revealed several details about the nearly decade-long process of investigating the killings and how one drop of blood led authorities to Hameed.
Investigators spent more than five years narrowing down a list of possible DNA matches, using court orders and international relationships to find the person they believed killed Sasikala and Anish.
Hameed worked with Hanumantha Narra as consultants with the Indian technology giant, Cognizant. They were both in the U.S. consulting for a Philadelphia-based company, officials said.
Hameed was also living in the same apartment complex as the Narras and had been following Hanumantha for “a significant period of time” prior to the killings, according to officials.
The investigation included countless interviews, reviews of financial records, rideshare records, cellphone records and geolocation data to connect Hameed to the crime scene, officials said.
Hameed was 29 years old at the time of the murders and returned to India in September 2017, authorities said.
Now, law enforcement officials in the U.S. are working with India to extradite Hameed back here to face murder charges.
On March 23, 2017, Hanumantha Narra returned home from a work party and found his wife and son brutally stabbed to death in their home, according to court records and 911 recordings.
His call to 911 operators described “blood everywhere,” a statement he repeated over and over again, according to recordings.
Both Anish and Sasikala were slashed several times across their necks and showed signs of defensive wounds, officials said Tuesday.
The violence suffered by Anish was particularly disturbing as investigators said he was nearly decapitated.
And there is no indication that Hameed had ever met Anish and Sasikala, officials said.
Hameed had been in the United States for a few years prior to the killings and did not drive while here, according to officials.
Authorities wouldn’t comment on the depth of the relationship between Hanumantha and Hameed, and a motive has not been identified by investigators.
“We’re still looking into some of those facts,” Lt. Brian Cunningham of the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office, who led the investigation, said Tuesday.
As investigators processed the scene, they came across a small bead of blood that was later determined to belong to someone other than Sasikala and Anish, officials said.
By June 2019, the blood was determined to match a male of Central Asian ancestry and investigators tracked down several dozen possible matches who all provided DNA samples to crosscheck against what was found at the scene, but none of the samples were a match, officials said on Tuesday.
Hameed was the only person identified as a possible match to decline to provide a DNA sample, and several attempts by U.S. investigators to work with officials in India to force him to cooperate were unsuccessful, officials said.
For almost three years it seemed as though connecting Hameed to the crime scene had gone cold. But a podcast called Murder in Maple Shade, published in January 2023, brought renewed attention to the case.
Officials on Tuesday criticized the podcast as “inflammatory” and denied letting the case languish over the years, citing pictures of Sasikala and Anish that hang in the Maple Shade Police Department’s Detective Bureau as reminders of the case they needed to crack.
“For over a year, we worked with the Department of Justice to examine other crimes to charge Nazeer Hameed with in an effort to extradite him back to the United States and obtain a DNA sample,” Cunningham said.
“Unfortunately, nothing reached the level to bring him back to this country other than criminal homicide,” Cunningham said.
In March 2023, investigators submitted a Mutual Legal Assistance request with the Indian government to force Hameed to submit his DNA through a court order.
The U.S. Department of Justice was notified that the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs had received the request, but it was never fulfilled, according to officials.
Authorities turned to Cognizant in August 2024, where they had determined Hameed was still employed, to see if they could obtain his DNA through another route.
Through a court order in September 2024, Cognizant provided Hameed’s company assigned laptop to investigators who had it forensically analyzed.
The analysis found Hameed’s DNA pulled from the laptop matched the blood droplet found at the murder scene, officials said.
No motive has been identified for the killings, but Cunningham said there “was a personal sort of vendetta against Hanu(mantha) Narra.”
The indictment filed against Hameed remains sealed, officials said.
Hameed was terminated by Cognizant after charges were filed in the United States, officials said. A spokesperson for Cognizant did not respond to a request for comment.
“Nazeer Hameed has managed to evade justice for years, and he must be held accountable,” Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia Bradshaw said Tuesday.
Bradshaw called for the U.S. government and the government of India to move swiftly to extradite Hameed.
“The passage of time does not diminish the gravity of these crimes, nor does it lessen our resolve,” Bradshaw said.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to confirm or deny the existence of extradition requests.
Extradition between nations typically requires a treaty between the two countries, according to U.S. law.
The U.S. and India have had an extradition treaty since 1997 which relates to offenses punishable by law in both countries with penalties of one year in prison or longer.
All requests for extradition must be submitted through diplomatic channels with supporting documentation, according to the treaty.
In urgent cases, both parties can request provisional arrests pending a request for extradition, according to the treaty.
A spokesperson from the Indian embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Donald Browne, attorney for Sasikala Narra’s family and spokesperson for the family, said Tuesday that it took a long time to see charges filed, but that justice can sometimes take time.
“They’re very thankful that everyone kept fighting and kept trying to find the answer to this case,” Browne said. “We’re at a good point now but there’s still a lot to learn.”
Sasikala’s family lives in India and they did not know Hameed, Browne said.
Hanumantha relocated to Colorado after a settlement was reached with Sasikala’s family over her estate.
He did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the charges, but officials said they have been in touch with him since charges were filed.
The local Indian community assisted authorities during the investigation, according to Indian Cultural Center board of trustees member Jayesh Parikh.
“We are deeply grateful to everyone involved for their dedication and perseverance over the past eight years, despite the many challenges and setbacks encountered along the way,” Parikh said.
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