When a cobra became a murder weapon

Last week, an Indian man was given a rare double-life sentence for killing his wife by making a cobra bite her. Soutik Biswas and Ashraf Padanna piece together the events leading to the grisly murder.

Suraj and Uthra had met two years earlier, via the services of a matrimonial broker. Suraj's father was an auto-rickshaw driver and his mother a homemaker. Uthra, who was three years younger than Suraj and suffered from learning disabilities, came from a significantly more well-off family - her father a rubber trader and mother a retired school principal.

But rather than attack her, the snake slithered away. Suraj picked it up and flung it on Uthra, but again it slithered off. When Uthra's mother entered the room the next morning, she told the police she saw her daughter lying on the bed with "her mouth open, and her left hand dangling on one side"."Why didn't you check whether she was awake?" Manimekhala Vijayan asked her son-in-law.Uthra slept on the bed on the left in this room where she was killed

More than 90 people, including herpetologists and doctors, testified. The prosecution built its case using Suraj's call records, internet history, a dead cobra exhumed from the back garden, a stash of sedatives in the family car and evidence that he bought not one but two snakes. Investigators said that Suraj had also purchased the Russell's viper which had bitten Uthra months before she died.

"This is a case of diabolical and ghastly uxoricide," said Judge M Manoj, referring to the murder of a wife. Judge Manoj sentenced Suraj to life in prison, saying he had schemed to kill Uthra and "disguise it as a death from an accidental cobra bite". On the night of 2 March, Suraj tried again. He laced his wife's pudding with sedatives, and released the viper in the bedroom while she slept.The murder took place on the ground floor of this house in Kollam district

Suraj remained with his son and parents at his home in Pathanamthitta. But he was already plotting again.

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