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On 10 January 2012, Mr S Bhuvaneswaran was killed by two men armed with sickles in Kolathur in the district of Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Mr Bhuvaneswaran was the secretary of land rights organisation, the Veerapuram New Colony Housing Welfare Association and had filed petitions and Right to Information (RTI) queries protesting against land-grabbing by a land mafia group allegedly associated with former Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of the Dravidian Progress Federation (DMK), a local political party in Tamil Nadu.

On 10 January 2012, at approximately 12.15 pm, two men on a motorbike intercepted S Bhuvaneswaran on Fifth Cross Street near his home in Gandhi Nagar in Kolathur, Tamil Nadu, as he was returning home on his motorcycle having picked his daughter up from school. One of the men took hold of his daughter while the other hacked the human rights defender repeatedly with a sickle. The assailants then fled the scene leaving S Bhuvaneswaran's daughter alone on the road. Neighbours alerted the family who brought S Bhuvaneswaran to a nearby hospital and later to Kilpauk Medical College Hospital where he was declared “dead on arrival”.

Following the deadly attack, S Bhuvaneswaran's father, Siva, lodged a complaint with the police accusing former MLA B Ranganathan of instigating his son's murder over a land dispute. Based on this complaint the police registered a case of murder under Section 302 and four teams have reportedly been formed in order to track down the perpetrators who they suspect are members of land mafia acting on the instructions of B Ranganathan. A case under Section 120-B for Criminal Conspiracy was also initiated against B Ranganathan.

Siva explained in his complaint how he had been granted power of attorney over 30 acres of land at Moorai near Avadi. He was given ten acres of this as a gift by the landowner and carved out the other 20 acres which he sold over the past five to six years. Due to health issues he had passed on the real estate business to his son, S Bhuvaneswaran.

A group of people allegedly backed by B Ranganathan had encroached on 100 acres of land including the 30 acres of over which Siva had power of attorney. S Bhuvaneswaran had fought a legal case, filed RTI applications and staged demonstrations to attract the government's attention to the issue. He had been successful in retrieving possession of 18 acres of his land and had lodged RTIs to retrieve the rest. He had also encouraged those affected to file complaints with the Chief Minister's Special Unit to get their land back.

On 7 July 2011, S Bhuvaneswaran had reportedly filed a complaint with the Avadi Tank Factory Police against B Ranganathan and three associates alleging that they had threatened him with death. According to information received, he was not granted any form of police protection following this complaint.

B Ranganathan is among several former DMK MLA members and ministers who had been accused on land-grabbing charges since the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) came to power. On 2 August 2011, he was arrested on a charge of land-grabbing but was released on bail. He was subsequently detained under the stringent Goondas Act.

Front Line Defenders believes that the killing of S Bhuvaneswaran is directly related to his work in the defence of human rights, in particular his work on land rights issues and on campaigning against land-grabbing in Chennai.