Indian police have arrested a priest for allegedly bludgeoning his lover to death with a stone after she threatened to disclose their affair if he refused to marry her.

Ayyagari Venkat Surya Sai Krishna, a 38-year-old married father of two and a priest of a temple in the southern city of Hyderabad, murdered Ms Kuruganti Apsara, 30, with whom he had an affair for a year, said the local police.

“Apsara had recently aborted her pregnancy and forced him to leave his family and marry her. This was Sai Krishna’s motive to kill her,” Indian Express quoted the Hyderabad police as saying.

On June 3, the priest picked up Ms Apsara from her home and headed towards the outskirts of the city, the police said.

They apparently had an argument which led to Sai Krishna allegedly smashing Ms Apsara’s head with a stone, before dumping her body into a manhole.

To cover his crime, he took the woman’s mother to a police station and lodged a false report stating that Ms Apsara was missing.

While the police were investigating the case, Sai Krishna covered the manhole with two truckloads of red soil on June 6, according to the Press Trust of India. He also burnt Ms Apsara’s handbag, washed his car and parked it at his apartment.

By then, the police had noticed inconsistencies in his report after reviewing CCTV footage, and he eventually confessed to his crime. He was arrested on June 9.

Ms Apsara’s mother, whom The Times of India identified only as Madam Aruna, said: “God will punish the accused.”