Exactly a year after Kerala was shocked by the case of a 30-year-old man killing his parents, sister and aunt at their home in Thiruvananthapuram, the state may be seeing another horrid tale of murders of four members of a family.
A woman was detained for questioning in Kannur district on Tuesday after suspicions emerged over the deaths of her eight-year-old daughter and her parents in a span of four months, with all of them suffering from vomiting. Soumya, who has been detained, lived at her parents' house in Pinarayi village in Thalassery, which, incidentally, is the home village of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Vijayan had reportedly ordered police to pursue the case proactively.
Soumya was separated from her husband.
Tragedy first struck the Vannathamveedu family in 2012 when Soumya's younger daughter, Keerthana, died of vomiting at the age of one. However, no suspicions were raised at the time.
On January 21, Aishwarya, Soumya's eight-year-old daughter, died from vomiting. Neighbours started getting suspicious when her mother, Vadavathi Kamala, aged 68, died on March 7 and father, Kunjikkannan, aged 76, died on April 13, both after bouts of vomiting. After Soumya also fell ill from vomiting following her father's death, anxious neighbours complained to authorities to inspect wells in the area. However, inspection of the wells didn't turn up anything suspicious.
The postmortem of the bodies of Soumya's parents revealed the presence of aluminium phosphide, a highly toxic substance. The body of Aishwarya was exhumed on Monday.
Police are currently questioning Soumya. Authorities said police had also detained four youth from the area who knew Soumya for questioning. Tests done on Soumya when she was in hospital did not reveal presence of anything suspicious.
In January, a woman in Kollam district killed her 14-year-old son by choking him to death before hacking him to pieces and burning his remains. The woman claimed she was possessed by evil spirits at the time.
(With inputs from Onmanorama and Manorama News)