Tirur: The death of six children in a family in a span of nine years at Chembra in Tirur of Kerala's Malappuram district has triggered suspicion amongst cops here. All six--three girls and three boys-- are children of the couple, Tharamal Rafeeq and Sabna.
The sixth child, who was just three-months-old, died at their home on Tuesday.
One child died at the age of 4.5 years, while the rest passed away before they turned one.
District police chief U Abdul Karim has said that a case of unnatural death has been registered. People from the locality informed the police about their suspicions after the couple showed undue haste to conduct the funeral.
The preliminary autopsy report of sixth child however, says that the child died of natural causes.
Two of the children were just three months old when they died, while the other children died at the age of eight months, two months, 40 days, and 4.5 years. The cops said that the couple do not have other children.
However, the couple gave little credit to the suspicions and said that all their children died from epilepsy. The relatives of the deceased also said that they had no complaints.
The children's paternal aunt said that a post-mortem of the third child had been conducted and nothing suspicious was found. Though tests were conducted at various hospitals during the first few deaths, they did not throw up any unnatural findings, relatives claimed.
