Tucson Fire medics found 19-year-old Julissa Rubi Salazar dead inside her midtown apartment on the 1700 block of North Tyndall Avenue Thursday afternoon, discovered during a welfare check her own family had requested after growing worried about her. By the time firefighters arrived around 4 p.m., her boyfriend, 20-year-old Varun Batchigari, had already boarded a flight out of Tucson International Airport, according to Tucson police. He would be arrested at the Munich airport before he could reach his planned destination of India.
Tucson police and homicide detectives identified Batchigari as the suspect and obtained arrest warrants for first-degree murder and kidnapping, according to the FOX 10 Phoenix report, which cited information provided by the Tucson Police Department. Salazar was found with signs of trauma, officials said. Local station KOLD News 13 reports that Batchigari allegedly strangled Salazar inside the apartment and stole her phone and debit or credit cards before heading to the airport, though police have not released full details on the events leading up to the homicide.
The apartment sits in a dense residential stretch of midtown Tucson near Euclid Avenue and Elm Street, an area populated largely by University of Arizona students and other young adults, per the Arizona Daily Star. Tucson police say Batchigari flew out of Tucson International Airport on Thursday, intending to continue on to India after his stop in Germany.
A Fast-Moving International Manhunt
Catching Batchigari before he could vanish required coordination across multiple continents and agencies. U.S. officials worked alongside federal and international partners to track him down in Germany, with assistance from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Marshals Service, according to police. The Munich Police Department also assisted in locating him and coordinating with German authorities on the ground.
The Arizona Daily Star reports that his apprehension was made possible through real-time coordination between Tucson police, the FBI's Tucson office, and the FBI Legal Attaché Office in Berlin, which alerted German authorities while Batchigari was still in transit. That Berlin office serves as the main liaison between U.S. federal law enforcement and German federal police. The Tucson Police Department expressed gratitude for the assistance and coordination from its federal and international partners in bringing the suspect into custody.
What Comes Next in the Extradition Process
Batchigari remains in custody in Germany and is expected to be extradited to Arizona, where he will be booked into the Pima County Adult Detention Complex on West Silverlake Road once he arrives, police say. That facility holds an average daily population of 1,600 to 1,800 inmates, according to the Pima County Sheriff's Office, roughly 65% of whom are awaiting trial.
Getting him from German custody to an Arizona courtroom is not instantaneous. Extraditions between Germany and the United States operate under a 1978 bilateral treaty that requires double criminality and adherence to what's known as the principle of specialty, a legal standard that restricts U.S. prosecutors from trying an extradited defendant on charges other than those specifically approved in the extradition request, according to guidance from the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg. German regional courts review such requests to confirm dual criminality and constitutional protections before signing off. Once approved, the U.S. Marshals Service's Office of International Operations is the federal entity typically responsible for physically transporting fugitives arrested abroad back to domestic jurisdictions.
A Pattern Local Prosecutors Have Long Warned About
The Pima County Attorney's Office has repeatedly flagged strangulation as one of the clearest warning signs in intimate partner violence cases. Citing National Institutes of Health research, the office notes that intimate partner strangulation increases a victim's risk of being later killed by 800%, a statistic the prosecutor's office includes on court release forms when arguing for high bail in domestic violence cases.
The case also lands amid sobering regional numbers. Police and sheriff's departments across Pima County respond to roughly 15,000 domestic violence calls each year, and Arizona's overall rate of intimate partner firearm homicides sits 45% above the national average, per the Arizona Daily Star. Families affected by such violence can turn to the Pima County Attorney's Office Victim Services Division, established in 1975 as the nation's first victim advocacy unit, which offers 24/7 crisis response and courtroom support.
Several questions remain unresolved as the case moves forward. Tucson police have not released a timeline for when Batchigari's extradition will be finalized, and the Pima County Medical Examiner has not yet issued formal findings on Salazar's cause and time of death. It also remains unclear whether additional federal charges, such as flight to avoid prosecution, will be filed against him.
