Melbourne (Australia): The Supreme Court of Victoria has reduced the jail term of Arun Kamalasanan, who was convicted of murdering his secret lover's husband in October 2015. While the court cut Kamalasanan's punishment by three years to 24 years, it rejected a similar petition from Sofia Sam, who has been sentenced to 22 years for collaborating with the main accused in the murder of her husband.
Sofia, the youngest daughter of a retired defence officer, and Kamalasanan were found guilty last year for poisoning Sam Abraham, a UAE Exchange employee, with cyanide-laced orange juice. Abraham, 34, who followed his wife to Australia, was found dead in the bedroom of his Epping house on October 13, 2015. The couple have a seven-year-old son.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court rejected Kamalasanan's arguments that he was not guilty and Abraham might have committed suicide. The court pointed out that the jury had perused the footage of Kamalasanan's confessions before the police. The court, however, allowed him to pray for parole after 20 years, instead of the original 23 years.
Sofia can apply for parole only after 18 years. The convicts can appeal the state Supreme Court order before the High Court of Australia.
The court observed that both Kamalasanan and Sofia played equal roles in the murder and there was nothing to warrant a longer punishment for the main accused. The court said that both of them led similar lives and went through similar situations.
The murder plot
Sofia and Abraham got married after an affair that started in their college days. Even then she had another affair with Kamalasanan, who went to the same college. After Sofia and Abraham moved to Australia, Kamalasanan followed suit with his wife and child. Sofia and Kamalasanan thought it necessary to do away with Sam to continue with their relation.
Sofia initially claimed that her husband died of a heart attack. She got the body flown to their home state of Kerala and buried it before returning to Melbourne with her son. The Malayali diaspora in Melbourne even raised about A$30,000 to help the family that had met with the misfortune. The law caught up with her after 10 months. She was arrested by the Melbourne police on August 12, 2016.
A triangle love
Sam and Sofia were neighbours at Karuvaloor in Kollam district and they used to sing in the choir group of a local church. They eventually fell in love during her college days in Kottayam. However, Sofia also developed an affair with Arun, an instrumentation engineer, almost the same time.
She married Sam in 2008 but kept in touch with Arun. Sam was working in Dubai at the time of their marriage. She had studied MSc in electronics and worked as an IT professional in Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram.
It was Sofia who first migrated to Australia with the help of her sister Sonia, who was already based in Melbourne. Sam joined the family later and they sang devotional songs in the choir of Mar Thoma Church in Melbourne.
Arun was already in Australia with his wife and child. However, he had sent his family back to Kerala later.
Sam, Sofia and their son had been living in Melbourne for about three years. The police suspected that Sofia had conspired with Arun for close to a year before killing her husband. It took the police about 10 months to crack the case.
Arun was also accused of having tried to murder Sam at a railway station three months earlier.
Vital clues for cops
According to reports in Australian media, cops got clues about the murder plot during an inquiry into an attack on Sam in July 2015. For months the detectives had been intercepting calls between Sofia and Arun before they nabbed the duo. Sam was attacked and stabbed by a balaclava-clad man who had been hiding in the foot-well of his car at Lalor train station. Cable ties, material scraps and handcuffs were found in his car. Sam had received injuries to the neck, temple and cheek. Police alleged Arun was the man in the balaclava.
According to newspaper reports in Melbourne, detectives used a long lens to spy on Sofia and Arun for months after the death, watching them meet for lunch and run errands. Cops also found a secret diary that Sofia shared with Arun, illustrating their "deep" feelings for each other.
According to The Age, a Melbourne-based newspaper, diary entries the pair wrote were read to the jurors during the trial.
"Can you hold me tight? I want to drift away in your love," prosecutor Kerri Judd QC read out from one of Sofia's diary entries, says a report in The Age. "She is the best match for me – but what to do? I am sure that one day she will be mine," Arun wrote.
Sofia's lies nailed
On October 14, 2015, Sofia had claimed that she woke up from the bed to find her husband dead. She had stated that she thought he'd suffered a heart attack. However, the prosecution argued that it would have been impossible for her to not know about the death of her husband sleeping next to her on the bed.
Sofia's lies were nailed when an autopsy on her husband's body detected traces of the poison.
The police, then, launched a covert operation that tracked the conversations between Sofia and Kamalasanan. The police tapped into about 100 hours of telephone chat between the two and got it translated into English to submit in the court.
Sam's father had stated in an interview to a national daily in 2016 that "Sam and Sofia knew each other from childhood and their friendship developed into a romance. Initially I opposed their marriage but was forced to accept it when Sofia threatened to kill herself." Sam's father had then stated the family never knew about Sofia's alleged extramarital affair.
Premonition
Sam perhaps knew about the dangers awaiting him better than anyone else did. "Next time I would be coming here in a coffin," he had told some of his relatives when he came home for the last time in October 2015. Sam and his family left for Melbourne on October 11, 2015. Three days later, the news of his death reached his family in Kerala.
He had given hints about the character of his wife to some of his relatives. He also told them that Arun had once attacked him inside his car. When he visited home last time, Sam had told his father Abraham that he should be buried near the tomb of his grandfather.
A good singer, Sam was loved by everyone for his behaviour when he worked first in Dubai and later in Melbourne.
The trial
The jury trial started on January 29, 2018. The 14-member jury found the duo guilty after a two-week trial. Though Sofia pleaded leniency for the sake of her son, the prosecution objected to it by saying that the accused had no thoughts about the child who woke up to find his father dead beside him.
Kamalasanan's counsel produced before the court several medical documents to support their claim that he had mental problems. Though his aged parents, wife and child wrote to the court to spare him, the court held him responsible for his acts. They were sentenced to jail on June 21, 2018.
