Thiruvananthapuram: The mysterious deaths that occurred at the Koodathil family over several years have hit the headlines again after a brief lull with the submission of a forensic report which confirm a murder.
As per the forensic report findings Jayamadhavan Nair, one of the dead was killed.
An injury to the head had caused his death, states both the post-mortem report and the report on the examination of internal organs.
Blood had clotted on the face as per the forensic check which was conducted to ascertain how the injuries were caused. A piece of blood-stained log was also taken for examination.
Differing depositions had fuelled suspicion
Former family caretaker Raveendran Nair had deposed that he saw Jayamadhavan Nair lying on the floor at the ancestral home, Uma Mandiram, on April 2, 2017, and he took him to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College in an autorickshaw.
"Domestic maid Leela had also accompanied. After the doctors informed about Jayamadhavan Nair's demise, Leela and I went to the Karamana police station in the autorickshaw," Nair had deposed.
Raveendran had also deposed that he got down to give his statements and Leela returned in the autorickshaw to the Koodathil home.
However, Leela deposed that she did not go to the Karamana station, and that Raveendran had asked her to take an autorickshaw and go home as the post-mortem was to be held.
Though the first probe team did not check the discrepancies in these statements, the second investigation team examined this in detail.
An autorickshaw driver, who first said that he had taken Jayamadhavan Nair to the hospital, later changed his statement. In his second statement, he deposed that he had not gone to the hospital and that he had lied as Raveendran had offered him Rs 5 lakh.
A neighbour used to park his autorickshaw on the premises of the Koodathil ancestral home. Instead of calling its driver, another autorickshaw was hired with the help of another family aide Sahadevan Nair to take Jayamadhavan to the hospital, complainant Prasanna Kumari had said, while pointing out that this was suspicious. These issues were also examined by the new probe team.
The dead
Seven deaths had happened over a period of 26 years - between 1991 and 2017 - at the ancestral house of the prosperous family at Karamana in the Kerala capital.
The seven deceased were Gopinathan Nair; his wife Sumukhiamma; the couple's three children Jayasree, Jayabalakrishnan and Jayaprakash; their kin Unnikrishnan Nair and Jayamadhavan Nair.
Though Jayamadhavan's brother Jayaprakash had vomited blood and died, the autopsy was not conducted.
The police and kin suspect that caretaker of the family and a few others, who aimed to corner the property, were behind the suspicious deaths. In her complaint Prasanna Kumari had claimed the will transferring assets worth Rs 30 crore to the caretaker Raveendran was fake.
In a report submitted to the Thiruvananthapuram district police chief in September 2018, the Crime Branch had said the deaths were suspicious and attempts could have been made to grab property.
Relatives and local people are mainly suspicious about the deaths of Jayamadhavan (in 2017), Jayaprakash (2012), and Jayabalakrishnan (2002) who were all unmarried.
Jayasree, sister of Jayakrishnan and Jayabalakrishnan, had allegedly committed suicide in 1991.
Unnikrishnan was the son of Gopinathan's elder brother Velu Pillai. Jayamadhavan was the son of Gopinathan's another elder brother Narayana Pillai.
Journalist R Anil Kumar, who also doubles up as a social worker, had filed a complaint on June 11, 2018. Based on this, the cops at Karamana, the special branch and the district Crime Branch had conducted investigations.
