Confirmed! All six Koodathayi murders due to poisoning

Confirmed! All six Koodathayi murders due to poisoning

Kozhikode: As the probe into the horrifying murders of six members of a family at Koodathayi village in Kerala's Kozhikode district goes on, a medical board has concluded that all these deaths were due to poisoning.

The board was specially constituted to aid in the investigation into the serial killings at the Koodathayi-based family over a period of 14 years from 2002. Another family member, Jolly Joseph, who is the main suspect has even owned up to the sensational murders.

The probe team expects that the report submitted by the medical board, comprising departmental heads of general medicine, neurology, and toxicology of the medical college and forensic professionals, would prove to be crucial during the trial.

The medical board’s report concurs with the probe team’s finding that the victims were killed by giving the deadly cyanide. Along with this, the probe team is also considering on listing expert doctors as witnesses.

The police had last month arrested Jolly Joseph over the murder of her first husband Roy Thomas. Jolly later confessed that she had given cyanide to six members of her husband’s family to eliminate them one after the other from 2002 to 2016.

The police have registered separate cases over each of the deaths.

A post-mortem report had made it clear that Roy Thomas died after he was poisoned using cyanide. After studying the treatment reports of the other five victims and the list of medicines administered, the board concluded that they too had been poisoned.

Even the symptoms of the victims during their last hours were those caused due to poisoning. It was inferred that all six had died after sodium cyanide entered their system.

Two other victims Sily and her daughter Alphine suffered from epilepsy, Sily's husband Shaju and other relatives had said. However, the medical board informed the police that epilepsy rarely caused deaths. When Sily was earlier admitted to a private hospital in Kozhikode with similar symptoms, traces of poison were found in the blood. The probe team has found medical records that prove this.

Sily was the first wife of Shaju, who later married Jolly.

Jolly's friend to give account

The police have decided to record the confidential statement of BSNL employee Johnson, one of Jolly's friends. The team, probing the Sily murder case would file a plea in this regard with the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court.

As per the Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the statement is recorded before the magistrate during the probe stage itself to prevent the witness from changing his statement during the trial.

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Onmanorama. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.