NEW: I’m told by a federal law enforcement source that the suspect charged with murdering his girlfriend in Tucson, AZ on Thursday, then trying to flee the country, is an Indian national who was admitted to the US on a F-1 student visa after flying into LAX on 1/8/2024.… pic.twitter.com/wIQNLeab0f
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 9, 2026
I’m told by a federal law enforcement source that the suspect charged with murdering his girlfriend in Tucson, AZ on Thursday, then trying to flee the country, is an Indian national who was admitted to the US on a F-1 student visa after flying into LAX on 1/8/2024.
20-year-old Varun Batchigari has been charged with first degree murder after Tucson police say he fatally strangled his 19-year-old girlfriend, Julissa Salazar, at an off campus apartment near the University of Arizona. It’s unclear if she was a student at UofA.
I’m told after the murder on Thursday, Batchigari tried to flee back to India, flying out of Houston and connecting in Germany, where he was arrested by local police after notification from the FBI attache there. The FBI is now working on extraditing him back to Arizona.
KOLD in Tucson reports that Batchigari had been a student at the University of Arizona, but the school had expelled him after a fight, and his girlfriend was about to break up with him due to a history of domestic violence and a prior sexual assault. Then she was killed. The outlet reports that Batchigari stole her phone and credit cards after the murder, and sent a series of texts to her mother pretending to be her, which led to a welfare check request and the discovery of her body.
Im told that according to federal records, up until his arrest for the murder, Batchigari maintained his legal status in the U.S. and his student visa had not yet been terminated despite his expulsion from the UofA, which would have violated the terms that that visa.
Attached below is his CBP photo courtesy of a federal source.
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