US man sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder of Telangana student

A court in Indiana, USA, sentenced a man to 60 years in prison for stabbing a graduate student to death at a gym in October 2023.

The accused has been identified as 25-year-old Jordan Andrade, who will be serving sentence at the Indiana Department of Corrections for the brutal stabbing attack on Varun Raj Pucha of Telangana. Whether Andrade serves his sentence in a traditional prison or a mental health facility will depend on future evaluations by the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC).

The tragic incident occurred on October 29 last year at a Planet Fitness gym in Valparaiso, where Andrade attacked Pucha by stabbing him in the head with a half-serrated tactical knife while the victim was sitting on a massage chair.

Pucha, who earned a master’s degree in computer science from Valparaiso University, died of his injuries a week later in a Fort Wayne hospital. He was just two months away from graduating. His death has devastated the victim’s family in Telangana.

The victim’s father, P. Ram Murthy, a government teacher from Khammam, expressed disbelief and sadness and could hardly understand why her son, who had only traveled to the US to study in August, was brutally attacked.