An Indian-American student has been charged with killing a high school friend in suburban Washington after reportedly finding the friend and his own girlfriend cheating on him.
Described as a gifted graduate student at George Washington University, 24-year-old Rahul Gupta has been accused of stabbing to death Mark Waugh, 23, on Sunday, after a weekend of drinking as part of Gupta’s birthday celebration. Citing court papers, The Washington Post quoted Gupta as telling the police: “My girl and my buddy were cheating. My girl was cheating with my buddy. I walked in on them cheating and I killed my buddy.”
Gupta, who has been charged with second-degree murder at his Silver Spring apartment in Maryland, is reported to have told a police officer later that he had made a mistake, adding: “He tried to kill me, though.”
A Montgomery County district court set a $2 million bond for Gupta. His defence attorney asked for the bond to be lowered to $50,000 so he could be released from jail. But the judge declined to reduce the bond.
“I believe the evidence will ultimately show that he has a valid defence,” the defence attorney said, noting: “It’s particularly tragic for someone who has a defence, and who has a promising career and a proven track record at school, to be held on a bond of this amount.”
The county prosecutor called it “a savage knife attack” with Gupta attacking Waugh with a knife pulled from the kitchen butcher block, inflicting seven or eight stab wounds on his jugular vein, upper chest and back. The blow to the back reportedly punctured a lung.