Kozhikode: Eight years after her husband’s death following consumption of cyanide-laced food, a woman and two others were arrested on Saturday. The woman, Jolly Amma Joseph, and the two others are also being investigated for the deaths of five others of the family, police said.
Confirming the arrests, Kozhikode rural superintendent of police K.G. Simon told reporters the arrests were in connection with the death of Roy Thomas in 2011, and the prime accused in the case was his wife Jolly. The two other accused – M.S. Mathew (44), a close friend of Jolly, and Prajikumar (48) – had allegedly supplied the cyanide to Mathew, who handed it over to Jolly.
For the past two months, a special investigation team, based on a complaint from Roy’s US-based brother, has been probing into the case of six suspicious deaths that had occurred between 2002 and 2016.
While Annamma Thomas had died in 2002, her husband Tom Thomas died six years later in 2008. Later, their son Roy Thomas died in 2011. Annamma’s brother Mathew died in 2014 and two relatives – Sili and her one-year-old daughter – died in 2016.
As police found that the deaths were suspicious, the remains of the six were exhumed on Friday and forensic reports were awaited, Simon said. In all the cases, traces of cyanide had been found and it had been a case of slow poisoning, police said.
“We found that Roy’s death had occurred due to cyanide, while the wife had claimed he had died of cardiac arrest,” he said. “We felt that the case had to be re-investigated,” he said, adding six people had died in similar circumstances over a period of about 14 years.
“But those deaths were not investigated. We found similarity, a pattern and the presence of one person in all the cases – Jolly,” he said. After the death of her husband, Jolly had got married to Sili’s husband.
According to the police, Annamma Thomas was killed to claim her money, while it is suspected that her husband Tom Thomas, a retired government employee, was killed to get more share of the property.
Roy was killed after their relationship deteriorated, police said. Annamma’s brother Mathew had insisted on postmortem of Roy, due to which he was killed, police said adding Sili and her one-year-old daughter were also killed in similar circumstances.
DGP Loknath Behra congratulated the probe team for cracking the case.