Prison For Man Who Set Fire To Estranged Wife's Montgomery County House

NORRISTOWN, PA — A Montgomery County man has received time behind bars after admitting that he set fire to his estranged wife's home after she obtained a protection from abuse order against him, according to court records and media reports.

Ravi Kumar Bellapu, 44, of Collegeville, Pa., was sentenced to a prison term recently by Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill after the judge accepted a guilty plea in the case.

Court records show that Bellapu was sentenced to 33 months to seven years for a felony arson count, 33 months to seven years for a felony count of endangering the welfare of children, and two-and-a-half years to five years on a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of children.

Bellapu, formerly of Perkiomen Township, reportedly set fire to a home on Lincoln Road back in the fall of 2020, according to a report in the Mercury newspaper.

The fire was set close to the side of the home and ended up engulfing trash containers and creeping up the vinyl siding to the home, the story says.

Bellapu's wife, her mother and their two sons were reportedly inside the home at the time of the blaze, but nobody was injured during the incident.

The wife had apparently taken out a protection from abuse order against her husband shortly before the fire incident.

Records from Common Pleas Court show that Bellapu entered his guilty pleas to the two felonies and one misdemeanor back on Aug. 5.

In exchange for the pleas, other charges that were originally lodged against Bellapu were dropped, according to the criminal docket sheet in the case.

The prison sentences for the three different guilty pleas were made concurrent.

The judge also ordered that Bellapu have no contact with the woman and that he stays away from the Perkiomen Township home.

Records in the case show that Bellapu was originally charged with a total of 19 felony counts, including criminal attempted homicide.

He was also initially facing a total of nine misdemeanors.

The docket sheet shows that Bellapu has been confined to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on $100,000 bail since his arrest.

The Mercury story says that state troopers had discovered evidence that Bellapu set the fire, and even had a K9 dog alert to the presence of ignitable liquids during a search of the defendant's vehicle following the arson incident.