Kerala serial murder case: Court sends three accused to police custody

The prime suspect in the Koodathayi murder case, Jolly Shaju has been sent to police custody for six days. She was sent to police custody on Thursday morning along with two other suspects M S Mathew and Prajikumar, who allegedly gave cyanide for the serial killing.

Kozhikode: A local court here on Thursday sent three accused in the Kerala serial murder case to police remand for a period of six days.

The police had arrested Jolly Shaju, the prime suspect, along with two of her partners M S Mathew and P Prajikumar for allegedly using cyanide to kill six members of a family in Koodathayi village of Kerala's Kozhikode district between 2002 and 2016.

Jollyamma Joseph alias Jolly committed these murders for property and for marrying a man of her choice. She was married to Roy Thomas and the first victim was her mother-in-law, Annamma Thomas in 2002. She had allegedly murdered with mutton soup laced with cyanide.

In 2008, her father-in-law Tom Thomas, a retired government official also died under mysterious circumstances. Jolly's husband Roy Thomas died in 2008. Though post-mortem was carried on his body and traces of poison was found, Jolly convinced the police that Roy had financial problems and could have possibly committed suicide.

In the year 2014, Annamma's brother M M Mathew and two-year-old relative of the family, Alphine also died, both under mysterious circumstances, though the latter's death was then believed to be by choking.

In 2016, Alphine's mother Sily died when she had been visiting a dentist.

Based on the complaint of Roy's brother Rojo Thomas, living in US, police filed a case and started their investigation. The investigation revealed chilling facts that Jollyamma Joseph was behind these murders and she eliminated six of the family members of her husband after which she married Shaju, her husband's relatives and husband of Sily, who she had allegedly murdered.

The graves of the family members were exhumed for postmortem. The arrests were made after the forensic experts examined the exhumed bodies. The accused will now be produced before the court on October 16 at the end of their remand period.

Jolly, the prime accused, had earlier this week admitted that she killed them all. The Investigating Officer (IO) handling the case had said she killed them in order to take away the property and marry Shaju Zacharia, Sily's husband.

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