Kozhikode: Jolly Joseph, the prime suspect in the sensational Koodathayi serial killings, was arrested on Friday over the death of Sily Shaju, one of her six relatives who died under mysterious circumstances in a period of 14 years.
The 47-year-old was arrested earlier this month over the murder of her first husband Roy Thomas at the Ponnamattom House at Koodathayi in Kerala's Kozhikode district. She had then allegedly confessed to killing other five members of his family, including his parents. Her alleged murders happened between 2002 and 2016.
Jolly had married Roy’s cousin Shaju later on. Sily, who had died in 2016, was the first wife of Shaju.
Jolly’s arrest in the Sily murder case was recorded by the investigating officer, Vadakara coastal CI K B Siju in jail.
Jolly's arrests in four other suspected murder cases, excluding Sily's, are yet to be recorded.
Earlier on Friday, Jolly, along with the two other accused M S Mathew and Praji Kumar, was shifted to the Kozhikode District Jail.
All the three accused had been remanded by the Thamarassery court, which said that it would consider their bail petitions on Saturday. The police will also seek permission to arrest Mathew, who has been named as accused in the Sily case in the FIR, on Saturday.
Jolly, Mathew and Praji Kumar were presented before the Thamarassery court by 4pm on Friday after their police custody ended. All three accused told the court that they had no complaints against the police. The court allowed the lawyers representing the accused to speak to their clients, but the police opposed the move to engage in a private conversation. As a result, the lawyers did not speak to the accused and left. A compliant would be submitted against the police in this regard, said the advocates of the accused.
The probe team had found that Jolly had given cyanide-coated pill to Sily at a dental hospital in Thamarassery. The probe revealed Jolly managed to kill Sily, her last victim, in her third bid. Her previous two attempts failed, however, she managed to poison Sily to death in 2016 in the third attempt two years after her daughter Alphine was eliminated.
Sily was given pills coated with cyanide and her daughter was given bread laced with the same poison.
Jolly has reportedly admitted that she had planned to kill Sily on the same day, May 3, 2014, Alphine too was targeted.
Jolly's friend questioned
A woman, who is reportedly a 'close friend' of Jolly, was interrogated by the Special Investigation Team at Vadakara on Friday.
The woman has been identified as Rani was interrogated at the SIT base on the precincts of Vadakara Rural SP's office.
The SIT hopes that Rani will be able to throw more light on Jolly's life. Rani used to run a now-defunct tailoring shop near the National Institute of Technology. Jolly had claimed she worked at NIT until police arrested her. Rani was present along with Jolly at the 'Ragam' cultural festival held at the NIT in 2019.
The police are in possession of photographs of Jolly, wearing an NIT identity card, along with Rani near the festival stage. On the basis of the photographs, the police team had launched a search operation.
After initial inquiry, the police had found that Sulekha, who runs a beauty parlour near the NIT, and Jayashree S Warrier, a Revenue Department employee, were also close friends of Jolly. Jolly was reluctant to speak about these people to the cops, police sources said.
Meanwhile, a high-level meeting convened by Superintendent of Police K G Simon took place at Kappad in Kozhikode to review the progress of the case.
