Court finds Sooraj guilty of murdering wife using snake; 4 out of 5 charges proved’ скачать в хорошем качестве

Court finds Sooraj guilty of murdering wife using snake; 4 out of 5 charges proved’

Kollam: The Kollam Additional Sessions Court on Monday pronounced the much-awaited verdict in the sensational Uthra murder case. The court found Sooraj guilty in the murder case and the verdict on the quantum of punishment will be delivered on Oct 13 Wednesday. The court said that 4 out of all five charges had been proved. The charges were read out to Sooraj. When judge asked if he had anything to say, Sooraj replied that he didn’t have anything to say. The prosecution argued that Sooraj’s action was bizarre, vicious, and atrocious, and that he should be sentenced to death. ‘This the rarest of the rare case in which the death penalty can be imposed. The accused planned another murder when his own wife was crying in pain. We need a verdict that sends the right message to society,” the prosecution argued. Defence counsel argued that this was not the rarest of the rare case and that Uthra’s case was not a murder. Uthra's father and brother had come to the court. This is the first murder case in Kerala wherein a snake was used to commit the crime. Scientific evidence, including the snake's post - mortem report and dummy test, was crucial in the case. On May 7, 2020, at around 8 am, Uthra, a native of Anchal Eram in Kollam and differently-disabled woman, was found dead in her bedroom due to cobra bite. Sooraj had bought the cobra from Suresh, a snake catcher and the former made the snake to bite Uthra, with the intention of eliminating her in order to grab her property. Earlier, Uthra was bitten by a viper at Sooraj's house in Adoor. The murder using the cobra took place while Uthra was resting after treatment from the first bite at her house in Anchal. Sooraj had tried to maintain that Uthra was bitten by a Cobra that entered the house through a window. Initially, the family and relatives had no doubts. But they grew suspicious after seeing Sooraj overly emotive during Uthra’s last rites. Uthra's brother Anchal had given a statement to the police regarding the mystery of the death. But the investigation did not proceed well. Sooraj was furious when Uthra’s relatives asked Sooraj to transfer the gold and money given to Uthra to the account under baby’s name. With this, the suspicion of Uthra's relatives increased. On May 21, 2020, Uthra's family filed a complaint with the police, saying that they were suspicious about her death. The next day, they also approached Rural SP Harishankar with a complaint. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was a murder. On May 23, 2020 Sooraj and Suresh were arrested by the probe team. On July 7, G Mohanraj was appointed Public Prosecutor. During the July 14 hearing, Sooraj had publicly confessed that he had killed Uthra. On July 18, 2020, an examination of Uttara's internal organs revealed the presence of the drug along with the poison of the cobra, which turned out to be crucial in the case. The investigation found that Suraj had given her juice laced with some drugs on the eve of day when Uthra was found dead. Then by 11 pm that day, he made a cobra he had kept in the room to bite her. On July 30, Uthra's murder was recreated using dummy. To prove that the snake was forced to bite Uthra, the investigation team conducted a dummy experiment with cobra and submitted the result to the court as evidence. The cobra that had bitten Uthra was 150-centimetre-long, and the bite by such a snake would cause only a 1.7 or 1.8 cm-deep bite on the human body. Investigators, who conducted the dummy experiment, established that Sooraj had held the snake's hood against Uthra's body, causing the bite to go as deep as 2.3 and 2.8 cms. There were 87 witnesses, 288 documents and 40 mainours in the case. #Uthracase #Uthramurdercase #Uthrasnakebitecase