The sister of a woman who was murdered and stuffed in a suitcase has penned an emotional tribute to the ‘loveable, kind and protective’ dentist.
The body of Preethi Reddy, 32, was found in a bag in the boot of her own car on Wednesday evening – four days after police suspect she was murdered by her ex-lover, 34-year-old Harshwardhan Narde.
Police are currently examining CCTV footage of the suspected killer requiring assistance from a hotel employee to carry a heavy suitcase into the boot of a car, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Officers believe he stabbed her to death in his hotel room at Swissotel in Sydney’s CBD before driving it 7km south to Kingsford, in the city’s east, where he dumped the vehicle.
The sister of a woman who was murdered and stuffed in a suitcase has penned an emotional tribute to the ‘loveable, kind and protective’ dentist (pictured together)
‘I just want my sister back safely. This is not like her, she would not be missing voluntarily… she’s our smiling, beautiful angel,’ Dr Reddy’s (right) sister Nithya (left) said before her body was found
Narde and Dr Reddy had a tumultuous five-year relationship that ended for good last year, and she moved on and started dating another man in November
Harshwardhan Narde, 34, (left) is believed to have murdered Preethi Reddy, 32, (right) in a $300-a-night Sydney CBD hotel room on Sunday
Narde then deliberately drove his BMW into a semi-trailer and was killed instantly in the fiery crash on Monday night, as he headed home to Tamworth.
‘Words cannot capture the pain we are feeling with the passing of my beautiful big sister,’ Dr Reddy’s sister, Nithya, said in the tribute.
‘Preethi was a bright light, loveable, kind and protective of all whom were lucky enough to have been loved and cared for by her.
‘While we now know that Preethi is no longer with us, the certainty of her movements on Saturday night and Sunday morning are not yet fully known, and we will stay in touch with detectives as they work it all out.
Nithya said her family ‘would never be the same without Preethi in our lives’.
‘Preethi was a bright light, loveable, kind and protective of all whom were lucky enough to have been loved and cared for by her,’ Nithya wrote
Police said she walked back to the hotel Narde was staying at on Market Street and stayed the night there – likely her last night alive (the former couple are pictured together)
The 32-year-old from Western Sydney had been attending a dental convention at St Leonards over the weekend, but had allegedly expressed concerns over the possibility of bumping into her ex-boyfriend, Narde at the event.
Police believe Narde, who was working as a dentist in a Tamworth practice, travelled the 400km to the convention purely to see Dr Reddy.
Friends of Dr Reddy told Daily Mail Australia she and Narde had a tumultuous five-year relationship that ended for good last year, and she moved on and started dating another man in November.
The new boyfriend, whom Dr Reddy told friends she planned to move to Melbourne with and marry, posted a heartbreaking tribute to her on Tuesday afternoon.
‘I’ll see you again one day… and we’ll continue where we left off my angel,’ he wrote, along with a photo of the two of them.
A source close to the family said Dr Reddy and Narde had dinner after the conference on Saturday at an Indian restaurant in Crows Nest.
Dr Reddy was then seen on CCTV buying two bottles of water from a McDonald’s in The Strand Arcade in the CBD about 2.15am on Sunday.
Harshwardhan Narde (pictured) died in a fiery crash on the New England Highway in NSW on Monday, a day after Preethi Reddy, 32, vanished from Sydney’s CBD
Dr Reddy was last seen at a McDonald’s before her body was found in a suitcase in her car on Tuesday. Her ex-boyfriend died in a car crash on Monday
Dr Reddy (right) left a dental conference, where she was learning about dental implants, about 7pm and was seen in her car an hour later
Police revealed on Wednesday they had obtained CCTV from the Swissotel Hotel where Narde was staying, which showed Dr Reddy in the foyer, sometime on Sunday morning.
At 10.06am she spoke to her family by phone, saying she was getting a late breakfast and would be home in a few hours. She was never heard from again.
A close friend of Dr Reddy said she suspected Narde probably took her to dinner to try to get back together and she went along with out of guilt.
She believed Narde snapped and murdered her when he found out she planned to move to Melbourne to start a new life with her new boyfriend.
‘I wish she never felt sorry for him, she was too nice,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Harsh’, as his friends called him, previously owned his own dental practice and received his Australian Dental Council qualification in 2013 (pictured)
Dr Reddy (right) alternated between not wanting to tell her friends, family, and colleagues she was back together with Narde, and not wanting to say they broke up
Dr Reddy was last seen alive on CCTV waiting in line at McDonald’s in The Strand Arcade, off George Street, about 2.15am on Sunday
‘She saw him depressed and blamed herself and thought one dinner will not harm me. And the dinner dragged on and on.’
Texts exchanged between Ms Reddy and her friend showed she was excited to move to Melbourne, and was even looking for jobs there.
‘I love him so much, I can’t wait for you to meet him,’ she wrote in December after a trip to visit her new partner in Melbourne.
‘I wanna get married, I can’t wait.’
However, while madly in love and moving on with her life, Dr Reddy still couldn’t completely cast her old flame aside.
‘I’m so glad you finally dumped [Narde] and moved ahead,’ the friend wrote, but Dr Reddy replied ‘you make me sound like such a bitch’.
Dr Reddy stayed at a hotel on Market Street in the CBD on Sunday with a man understood to be her ex-boyfriend. The man later died after he deliberately crashed his BMW head-on into a truck (pictured)
Ms Reddy (pictured) opted to not tell Narde about her celebration at a restaurant in Coogee because she didn’t want her friends to know they were seeing each other again
Dr Reddy met Narde, a fellow dentist, in 2013 during a course and they dated until 2016, but were on-again off-again later in the year.
Weeks before her 30th birthday in October that year, while they were ‘on a break’, Narde was contacting her friends trying to organise a party.
Ms Reddy eventually opted to not tell him about her celebration at a restaurant in Coogee because she didn’t want her friends to know they were seeing each other.
‘He was always forcing things, even when they weren’t a couple, and she’d go along with it even if she just wanted to be friends,’ the friend said.
By 2017, Dr Reddy decided to give the relationship another try and spent a lot of time in Tamworth, in NSW’s Upper Hunter region, where Narde worked.
‘Harsh kept complaining that she wasn’t trying to get a job in Tamworth and blamed her for everything wrong with the relationship,’ the friend said.
‘He was very possessive.’
The close friend said Dr Reddy ‘admired Narde’s work’, but her boyfriend would always get angry when she suggested how he could do better.
Dr Reddy (third from left) felt so awkward about finally breaking up with Narde (third from right) in early 2018 breakup that she hung out with him at last year’s conference in March
Pictured are Dr Reddy’s last movements before her disappearance. Her ex-boyfriend died near Tamworth (right) on Monday
Dr Reddy alternated between not wanting to tell her friends, family, and colleagues she was back together with Narde, and not wanting to say they broke up.
She felt so awkward about finally breaking up with Narde in early 2018 that she sat with him at last year’s conference in March.
Narde found it even harder to let go, insisting they were ‘meant to be’ and kept trying to get back together.
He took off on a long overseas trip, returning in mid-February, when Dr Reddy confided in her friend that she was worried about him.
On Friday, when she was at the Bungalow 8 nightclub in Darling Harbour after the first day of the conference, she spoke about how hard Narde being there was.
Preethi Reddy, 32, (pictured) vanished from Sydney’s CBD hours after the Mardi Gras parade
Dr Reddy spoke on the phone with her family at 11.06am on Sunday and she ‘gave no indication anything was wrong’ and she promised to be home in a few hours after having a late breakfast
Her body was found stuffed inside a suitcase in the boot of her grey Volkswagen Golf (pictured) at Kingsford, in Sydney’s south-east
‘Preethi said he wasn’t himself, that there was something off about him,’ they said.
Oasis Smiles Dental Clinic in Tamworth posted a tribute to Narde, saying he was ‘beloved’.
‘We will miss him beyond words. He touched many people’s lives and we will always remember him with his big cheeky smile.
‘We have been inundated with love and support in which we couldn’t be more grateful at this time.’
Narde graduated in dentistry from Bangalore, India in 2009.
‘Harsh’, as his friends called him, previously owned his own dental practice and received his Australian Dental Council qualification in 2013.
Detective Superintendent Gavin Dengate said that telling Dr Reddy’s parents she was dead was the ‘toughest thing you can ever do’.
‘I have goosebumps talking about it. As a parent, the worst thing we can do is bury our kids. It’s a space none of us want to be in,’ he told reporters on Wednesday.