TN woman murders son, tries to kill daughter as she finds children a hindrance to her extramarital affair

KANYAKUMARI: The Marthandam police in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu arrested a young woman on Thursday for murdering her one-and-a-half-year-old son by lacing his food with poison and attempting to murder her daughter in a similar manner. The woman tried to cover up the crime by claiming that the children had accidentally consumed rat poison.
The arrested woman has been identified as Karthika of Kulakachi, wife of a mason named Jagadeesh.Police said the couple had two children named Sanjana, 3, and Saran.
Jagadeesh went for work on Wednesday. Later, he got a call from his wife that their son, Saran, was motionless after accidentally consuming rat poison.
Jagadeesh rushed home and took the baby to hospital where doctors stated that he was dead. The Marthandam police sent the body to the Kanyakumari Medical College Hospital for postmortem and began investigations with the Saran’s parents, relatives and neighbours. While the police could find rat poison at home, there was no trace of the same on the toddler’s body.
The police then took Jagadeesh and Karthika to the police station for questioning. They subjected the woman’s phone for forensic analysis. The police realised that she had deleted her call history and conversations with many people including Sunil, a vegetable vendor at Marayapuram, with whom she had spoken for long close to the time the boy consumed poison.
On quizzing her, she confessed that she had mixed poison in semiya she had served to her daughter and son as she found them a hindrance to her relationship with Sunil. While Sanjana survived as she had eaten only little of the poison-laced semiya, Saran who had consumed more died.
Inquiries with Sunil revealed that he started avoiding her when he came to know that Karthika was married and had children. But the woman was not ready to give up her liking for him.
The police booked Karthika under sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 307 (punishment for attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. She was remanded in judicial custody.