Melbourne: The Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday sentenced Kerala woman Sofia to 22 years in jail for murdering her husband Sam Abraham at their home in Epping, a suburb of Melbourne, in October 2015. Sofia's paramour and main accused Arun Kamalasanan, who is married to another woman and the father of a child, was sentenced to 27 years in jail. Both were found guilty in February for poisoning Sam with cyanide-laced orange juice.
Both Sam and Sofia, the youngest daughter of a retired defence officer, were neighbours at Karuvaloor village in Kerala’s Kollam district. A UAE Exchange employee, Sam, 34, was found dead in the bedroom of his Epping house, where he stayed with Sofia and their four-year-old son, on October 13, 2015.
Sofia told Sam's family members and relatives that he died after a heart attack and brought his body to Kerala for the funeral. She later went back to Melbourne along with their son.
Sofia, along with Arun, was arrested 10 months later on August 12, 2016 following a toxicology report which indicated presence of cyanide in Sam's blood and liver.
The duo had stood without expression when the remand order was read out in a court in August.
The police had intercepted phone calls throughout their covert probe and had about three months of phone recordings before they nabbed the murderers.
During the trial, Melbourne police revealed that Sofia and Arun, who is from Palakkad district in Kerala, were having an extramarital affair and plotted Sam's murder on Facebook Messenger, the online chat app.
Sofia's elder sister Sonia, who is working as a nurse in Melbourne, would be taking care of the seven-year-old son of Sofia and Sam.
According to cops, Sofia and Arun committed the murder after meticulous planning for almost a year.
Sam-Sofia-Arun love triangle
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 their college days in Kottayam. However, Sofia also developed an affair with Arun, an instrumentation engineer, around 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.
Arun was already in Australia with his wife and child. However, he later sent his family back to Kerala.
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.
According to prosecution, Sofia and Arun mixed cyanide in orange juice to murder Sam. Arun is 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.
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.
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.
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.