By Shelesh Joshi and Rajiv Menon 
New Delhi, June 8: Anshul Kuncha had a master’s degree, a full time job, and no reason to be in danger that night. He went out to deliver three pizzas in North Philadelphia and was shot dead outside a vacant apartment where nobody had ever placed a real order.
He was a Data Validation Analyst at a Pennsylvania company a young man from a small locality near Hyderabad who had done everything the right way. Crossed an ocean. Earned the degree. Built a life. The weekend shifts at Pete’s Pizza were just extra income, the kind of financial juggling that makes sense when rent is expensive and you want to send a little more money home to your family.
He is the latest Indian student killed in US and one of the most chilling cases yet. On the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, June 6, he carried three pizza boxes to an address in North Philadelphia where nobody had actually ordered food. He was shot in the head at close range. He was 28 years old.
His name was Anshul Kuncha. He was from Gundlapochampally in Telangana’s Medchal Malkajgiri district. And as of this report, his family is still waiting to bring his body home.
Quick Summary
- Anshul Kuncha, 28, a Data Validation Analyst at DataBank IMX, was shot dead on June 6 at Raymond Rosen Homes, North Philadelphia, after delivering pizza to a vacant apartment that had no real occupant.
- Philadelphia Housing Authority surveillance cameras captured 2 individuals in dark clothing walking behind Kuncha into the complex just minutes before the shooting.
- Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small confirmed investigators recovered 3 spent shell casings at the scene and that they have the phone number used to place the fraudulent order.
- The Consulate General of India in New York issued an official condolence statement on June 6, 2026, confirming it is in contact with Kuncha’s family and extending all possible assistance.
- Kuncha is the 2nd Pete’s Pizza delivery driver to be killed in North Philadelphia in recent years a 29-year-old employee of the same establishment was gunned down there in 2024.
- Ministry of External Affairs data placed before the Rajya Sabha in August 2024 confirmed that 6 Indian students were killed due to violence in the United States across 2023 and 2024 combined.
How This Indian Student Killed in US: The Fake Midnight Pizza Order That Started It All
Officers from the Philadelphia Police Department and the Philadelphia Housing Authority arrived at Raymond Rosen Homes a public housing complex on the 2300 block of Edgley Street in North Philadelphia after gunshots were reported just after 12:30 AM, as reported by Free Press Journal. They found Kuncha in the courtyard. On the ground. Unresponsive. A wound to his head. His pizza warmer was still sitting in his parked car nearby.
An Indian student shot dead in Philadelphia after fake pizza delivery that is what investigators were now staring at. A 28-year-old data analyst from Telangana, lying in a courtyard, three untouched pizza boxes sitting inside an empty apartment upstairs. He was rushed to Temple University Hospital. He was declared dead around 1 AM, as reported by The Federal.
Inside the apartment unit he had been sent to, police found three pizza boxes and the delivery bag, all untouched. Nobody had been there to receive them. Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small confirmed, as cited by The News Minute, that the apartment was vacant. Whoever placed that order had no intention of answering the door.
Three spent shell casings were found on the ground. Chief Inspector Small confirmed this publicly. The detail matters: whoever shot Anshul Kuncha was standing close when they did it.
Surveillance cameras operated by the Philadelphia Housing Authority caught him walking in, boxes in hand. Two figures in dark clothing followed behind him, one appeared to be carrying a backpack, as confirmed by The Federal. The camera did not catch what happened next. The shooting took place just outside its frame.
No arrests have been made. No motive has been officially confirmed, as reported by American Bazaar Online. One lead: the phone number used to place the order. Chief Inspector Small confirmed publicly, as cited by LatestLY, that investigators have it. That is the thread they are pulling.
Who He Was
People who move from small towns in Telangana to universities in America are not doing it on a whim. It takes years of preparation, real family sacrifice, and a specific kind of quiet determination that does not get adequately described in any condolence statement.
Kuncha left Gundlapochampally four years ago to pursue a master’s degree in Business Analytics in the United States, as reported by The Federal. He graduated in 2024. He got a full time role as a Data Validation Analyst at DataBank IMX in Pennsylvania. The degree had paid off. The plan had worked.
The delivery shifts at Pete’s Pizza were supplementary income, as reported by The News Minute. So was the MBA he was pursuing at Temple University alongside his full time job. Because for a lot of young Indian graduates in America, one income stream rarely covers everything in the early years, and ambition does not stop at one qualification.
That is not a criticism. It is just the reality of that particular chapter of life when you are a graduate student turned professional trying to make the numbers work in an expensive American city. He was 28. He had a day job, an evening degree, and a weekend shift that was supposed to help with rent. That is who was shot in that courtyard.
What His Sister Said
Tanvi, Anshul’s sister, has been speaking to the media since the news broke. What she is saying deserves to be heard without being summarised away. “It was a trap, meant solely to kill him,” she told reporters, as reported by Dynamite News. “He was told to deliver pizza in an abandoned area, but we later learned it was a decoy. There was no one there.”
She said she does not know what the killers wanted. Nothing was taken from Anshul’s body no cash, no phone, no belongings as confirmed by the family to South Matters. The attackers left without taking anything. That is not how most robberies end.
As reported by The News Minute, Tanvi also revealed that Anshul had been robbed in Philadelphia before. His phone. His cash. His belongings. He had survived that. He had stayed. He had kept going.
He survived the robbery. He did not survive the trap. Tanvi has formally appealed to the Ministry of External Affairs to arrange the return of her brother’s body so the family can perform his last rites. And then she said something that no government statement or bilateral framework will ever fully address. “He didn’t want to go to the US, but we sent him, and look what he ended up in,” as reported by The Federal. A lot of Indian families will feel that sentence this week. It is not the kind of grief that fits into a press release.
What the Consulate Said And What It Could Not Say
On June 6, 2026, the Consulate General of India in New York posted on X: “We are deeply saddened by the untimely demise of Mr. Anshul Kuncha, an Indian national in Philadelphia, PA. Our thoughts and heartfelt condolences to his family during this difficult time. The Consulate is in touch with Anushul’s family and is extending all possible assistance.” LatestLY and Republic World confirmed this as the official consular response. The Ministry of External Affairs had not issued a separate formal statement as of this report.
The consulate did what consulates do. It issued a statement. It made contact. It offered assistance. These are real things, and the family needs them. But a condolence statement does not explain how a young man ends up shot in the head after delivering pizza to a vacant apartment at 1 AM. And it does not prevent the next one.
The Trap Has a Name
What happened to Anshul Kuncha has a specific name in American law enforcement circles: a fake delivery trap. As reported by Sunday Guardian Live, the mechanics are not complicated. Someone places a food delivery order. The address is vacant, isolated, or chosen because it is somewhere no one will easily hear what happens there. The driver arrives, because that is the job, because that is the income. And someone is waiting.
CBS Philadelphia documented a case from February 2019 in the same city. A pizza deliveryman was shot and killed after a gunman broke into a vacant home under construction, placed a delivery order to that address, and waited. Philadelphia Police used the words “ambush style attack.” In a separate Philadelphia case, also reported by CBS Philadelphia, a driver who felt something was wrong at the address called the number back and an armed man walked up to him demanding money. Same city. Same method. Different years.
As reported by The Week India, Anshul Kuncha was not the first Pete’s Pizza driver to be killed. A 29-year-old employee of the same establishment was gunned down in front of the store in 2024. Whether Pete’s Pizza reviewed its delivery protocols after that death whether any address verification process was introduced, whether any risk assessment of delivery zones was undertaken before sending another young man out alone at midnight none of this appears in any public record. The question has not been answered publicly. It may not have been asked.
What Parliament Was Told
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha on July 26, 2024, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh confirmed, as reported by PTI, that 633 Indian students died abroad across 41 countries over the preceding five years. The United States accounted for 108 of those deaths. Only Canada was higher, at 172. Of deaths specifically caused by violence, the US recorded 6. Canada recorded 9.
In a separate written reply to the Rajya Sabha on August 1, 2024 also reported by PTI and covered by Deccan Herald the same minister stated that 7 Indian students were killed by violence across three countries in 2024 alone, two of them in the United States. In 2023, four Indian students were killed by violence in the US.
Six Indian students killed by violence in the United States across just 2023 and 2024, as confirmed before India’s Parliament. Anshul Kuncha’s name was not in that count when those replies were filed. It is now. The minister also confirmed that 1.33 million Indian students were enrolled in foreign universities as of January 1, 2024, based on data from Indian missions and posts abroad.
The Size of the Community in America
The Open Doors 2025 Report, published by the Institute of International Education on November 17, 2025, puts the figure at 363,019 Indian students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2024-25 academic year a 10 percent increase from the year before as confirmed in the Institute’s official press release. India was the single largest source of international students in the US for the second year running, making up 30.8 percent of all 1,177,766 international students in the country.
According to the same report, international students contributed nearly 55 billion dollars to the US economy in 2024, per US Department of Commerce data, and supported more than 355,000 jobs according to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators.
A country that takes 55 billion dollars and 355,000 jobs from students who came to study has some obligation to keep those students safe. A significant portion of those students especially those in the first year or two after graduation are working part time to keep up with rent and daily costs. Delivery shifts.
Gas station counters. Late nights in unfamiliar neighbourhoods. That is the world Anshul Kuncha was navigating when he was killed. Most of those young men and women are navigating it without any warning system, any institutional awareness, or any mechanism to flag when a delivery address is wrong.
Nobody Built a System to Warn Him
There is something structural underneath this individual tragedy, and it is worth saying plainly. Delivery workers in the United States whether they work through apps or walk in restaurants have no tool that flags a vacant address, a high crime delivery zone, or a location that has previously been used to place a fraudulent order. That information is not offered to them. It is not required by any employer. It does not exist in any standardised form.
Customer identity verification when placing a food delivery order is minimal to nonexistent. Nothing prevents someone from placing a fake order to a vacant apartment at 1 AM. Nothing in the current system would have stopped what happened to Anshul Kuncha from being set in motion.
Pete’s Pizza lost a delivery driver in 2024. It lost another in 2026. Both in North Philadelphia. Whether any review was conducted between those two deaths, whether any new protocol was introduced, whether any risk assessment of delivery zones was undertaken none of this appears in any public record. The investigators working Kuncha’s case have a phone number and some surveillance footage. Both are useful. Both exist only after the fact.
Other Names That Should Not Be Forgotten
Pole Chandrasekhar, 28, from LB Nagar in Hyderabad, had just finished his master’s degree at the University of North Texas and was trying to find full time work. In October 2025, he was shot dead at a gas station in Denton, Texas, while working a part time shift, as reported by Deccan Herald.
Sai Teja Nukarapu, 22, from Khammam district in Telangana, was not even on duty the night he was killed. He was helping a friend at a gas station near Chicago in November 2024 when he was shot dead, as reported by Deccan Herald citing PTI.
G. Praveen, 26, from Ranga Reddy district, was studying for his master’s degree in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In March 2025, his family was informed he had been found dead with bullet wounds, as reported by PTI and Careers 360. The details were murky at first. They remain murky.
Young Indian men, working part time to get through the early years of a graduate career in America, killed in American cities by people who were never found. Each one a family that got a phone call they were not prepared for.
And then there is Canada. In 2023, Gurvinder Nath, 24, an Indian student delivering food in Mississauga, was killed after a fraudulent order was used to bring him to a specific address. Inspector Phil King of Peel Regional Police said it plainly in a public statement, as reported by PTI and carried by Deccan Herald: the order was placed to get the driver to that location.
Mississauga, 2023. Philadelphia, 2026. The same method. Three years and a border apart. Nobody appears to have connected those dots in any formal or preventive way in the time between.
What the Government Has Said and What It Has Not Done
In his written reply to the Lok Sabha in July 2024, Minister Kirti Vardhan Singh told Parliament that “safety and security of Indian students abroad is one of the top most priorities of the government of India,” as reported by PTI. He said Indian missions “maintain regular contacts” with students. He said incidents are “immediately taken up” with host country authorities. He pointed to the MADAD portal for grievances.
These things exist. They are not nothing. But regular contact with student associations did not warn Anshul Kuncha about vacant apartment deliveries at 1 AM. The MADAD portal processes grievances after something has already gone wrong. And taking up an incident with host country authorities after a young man has been shot in the head is not the same as preventing it.
What does not exist in any publicly available government statement, any treaty text, or any parliamentary record is a formal bilateral safety protocol between India and the United States specifically focused on Indian nationals working in the gig and informal economy. No such agreement has been announced. No such negotiation has been reported. No such framework has been placed before Parliament. That is the gap. It has been there for years, and the list of names keeps growing.
Still Waiting
As of June 8, 2026, no arrests have been made. No suspects have been named. The motive is officially unconfirmed, as reported by American Bazaar Online. Investigators are tracing the phone number used to place the order and reviewing footage from Philadelphia Housing Authority cameras, as reported by The News Minute and LatestLY. The case is open.
In Gundlapochampally, a family is waiting. Not for updates. Not for a statement from a consulate. They are waiting for their son’s body to come back so they can say goodbye to him properly. Tanvi has asked the Ministry of External Affairs to make that happen faster. There is no confirmed timeline as of this report.
Anshul Kuncha left home to study and to build something. He did both. He earned the degree. He got the job. He was working a Friday night shift to make a little extra and send some of it home to a family that had sacrificed to get him there. He was 28 years old. He had plans. His family is still waiting to bring him home.
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Tracking world politics, global markets, trade movements, policy decisions, and the changing balance of economic power.
- Shelesh Joshi
- Shelesh Joshi
- Shelesh Joshi
- Shelesh Joshi
Specializes in South Asian geopolitics and global diplomacy, bringing in-depth analysis on international relations.
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
