For weeks, 55-year-old Gade Vijayalakshmi has lived in a state of suspended animation, running from pillar to post, searching police stations and mortuaries in Vijayawada for any sign of her 25-year-old son Sai Krishna.

All she remembers is a chilling directive allegedly given to her by Krishnalanka Circle Inspector Nagaraju on May 9: “Buy a funeral garland.”

In the dark history of police brutality cases, from Tamil Nadu’s infamous Sathankulam tragedy to the backrooms of Andhra Pradesh, families are usually left with a grim finality – a body to weep over and perform the last rites for.

But in this case, there is no dead body.

Instead, Vijayalakshmi is trapped in a nightmare of competing political narratives, wiped CCTV footage, and the terrifying possibility that her son’s body was given an undocumented, hurried cremation at a local electric crematorium.

Gade Vijayalakshmi, Sai Krishna's mother with Andhra Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu

On May 6, Sai Krishna was picked up by the Krishnalanka police from Markapuram, a town nearly 300 km from Vijayawada. Weeks later, the Andhra Pradesh Police are unable to answer the most basic questions before the High Court: Where is Sai Krishna? Is he dead? And if so, where is his body?

One possible clue may lie at a crematorium in Vijayawada.

The Swargapuri Burial Ground in Krishnalanka has for the past few weeks seen a steady stream of journalists and members of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Andhra Pradesh Police, amid claims that Sai Krishna’s body had been electrically cremated to conceal a custodial death.

Swargapuri Burial Ground -- the crematorium where Gade Sai Krishna is alleged to have been buried

Two burial ground employees told TNM they were in no position to verify those allegations. However, Basha, one of the employees, recalled that four unidentified dead bodies had arrived from Krishnalanka police station on May 23. “Two came in the morning and two between 7–8 pm,” he said. “We don’t know which was Sai Krishna’s, or even if any of them were his.”

Krishnalanka police station is located near the Pandit Nehru bus station, the railway tracks, and the Krishna river. A sizable homeless population also lives below the nearby Kanakadurga flyover. According to Basha, unidentified bodies frequently turn up in the area because of these factors.

“We don’t see the bodies,” another employee seated beside Basha interjected. Requesting anonymity, he said, “Our work begins only after we verify the paperwork from the police and the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC). We then carry out the cremation. It’s routine work… we never imagined it would become part of such a major controversy.”

Following the Sai Krishna case, the Swargapuri burial ground has been maintaining a new register to record the date and place where an unidentified body was found, the gender and approximate age of the deceased, and a signature from the VMC vehicle depot driver who brings any dead body to the ground. They are also asking for the copy of a letter written by a police official to the VMC’s vehicle depot in-charge. Before, they would merely jot down the date and time of the cremation.

The discomfort of the burial ground employees was evident, but it mirrors a larger ambiguity at the heart of the case.

In the days since the allegations surfaced, competing narratives from media outlets, political actors and pressure groups have only deepened the controversy, with some rallying behind CI Nagaraju and others demanding accountability. Sai Krishna’s criminal past, his caste, and why a task force was sent to arrest him have all become points of contention.

According to data submitted by the Union Home Affairs Ministry in the Parliament, 806 custodial death cases were registered in India between April 2021 and March 2026, of which 11 were in Andhra Pradesh. Many investigations have shown that scores of custodial deaths don’t even get classified as such.

But in Sai Krishna’s case, at the centre of the controversy is an unusual and troubling fact: there is no body. 

Krishna, who dropped out of school after class 9, was working for a food delivery app in Markapuram.

But he was not just a gig worker. He had at least 20 criminal cases registered against him, mainly in Vijayawada. The list of charges ranged from convictions for petty violations under the Andhra Pradesh Gaming Act to a pending trial under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, and a 2019 case for voluntarily causing hurt using dangerous weapons.

There was also a rape case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, in which he was acquitted. His family says the POCSO case was foisted on him for being in a relationship with a relative when he was himself still a minor.

Out of the 20 cases, Sai Krishna had already been acquitted in three, including the POCSO charge, while six ended in a compromise, four resulted in convictions, and the remaining were either under investigation or pending trial.

On May 6, Sai Krishna was picked up at 3 am from his house in Markapuram by a........

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