Not only was he pursuing two master's degrees from Temple, but Akhil was also managing his father's India-based business - supplying pharmaceuticals to companies that sold them to Americans on the Internet.

In the year since he had proposed, Foram watched Akhil grow the U.S. side of the business from a two-person, 1,000-pill-a-day operation into a 10-person, 50,000-pill-a-day enterprise. Already, the intense 26-year-old had earned his first $1 million, money he used to buy a new five-bedroom, $420,000 condo in an affluent Delhi suburb.

But she didn't love him for his money. After they met at the Temple library, their first dates were visits to the Franklin Mills mall. Back then, they took walks on Kelly Drive and watched Friends and Seinfeld. Now, Akhil was promising to fly her to London for New Year's Eve.

Their parents didn't know about the engagement; the couple was going to wait until Akhil graduated and they could return to India.

Foram found Akhil, with the green tint in his brown eyes, to be handsome, brilliant, kind, genuine, confident, sure to succeed. Akhil acknowledged that he was "obsessed with achievement and perfection." His memory was photographic, his class papers top-rate. Someday, she knew, he would run a large hospital in India.

Even Akhil's jokes related to business. The doormat outside his Roxborough apartment said: "Please stay on the mat. Your visit is very important to us. Your knock will be answered in the order in which it was received."

Foram loved Akhil's directness. Before he proposed, he hacked into her e-mail account to make sure that she was true, that she really cared for him.

Akhil told her about the snooping afterward. "All is fair in love and war," he said.

She found this charming.

He had his faults, among them a quick temper. When an argument would reduce her to tears, he would wave a hand and say, "Ah, you women use tears as your weapon."

When she would tell him to stop bragging, he would say, "What is man without ego?"

Akhil cared little about politics. His passions were cars, money and music.

And although he was proud to help grow his father's business, Akhil yearned to make a name for himself. He often cited the Hindi expression upnay pairopay khada hona: "Stand on my own feet."

Foram knew that Akhil was so driven, he had trouble relaxing, even on vacation. During a trip to Niagara Falls, Akhil spent hours tethered to a laptop. When Foram urged him to join friends at the barbecue grill, he snapped, "This is important."

Later, he explained that he had just caught a German rival hacking into his computer to steal client data.

Akhil retaliated. He sent the bastard a virus.

AGRA, INDIA

Dr. Brij Bansal opened an e-mail from a Costa Rican online pharmacy operator.

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