New Delhi –
An Indian man was sentenced to two life terms in prison for killing his wife with a bite ular cobra. The killing of this venomous animal had shocked India.
Reported from BBCin April 2020, 28-year-old Suraj Kumar paid 7,000 rupees ($92; £67) for an Indian cobra, one of the most venomous snakes in the world.
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Snake trade is illegal in India, so Suraj buys it secretly from catchers they areSuresh Kumar, in the southern state of Kerala.
Suraj drills a hole in the plastic container for airflow, puts the cobra inside, and takes it home.
Thirteen days later, he put the container in a bag and trudged to his father-in-law’s house, some 44 km, where his wife Uthra was recovering from a mysterious snake bite.
Suraj and Uthra had met two years earlier, through the services of a matchmaker. Suraj’s father is a rickshaw driver and his mother a housewife. Uthra, who is three years younger than Suraj. Uthra is a learning disability, comes from a much wealthier family – his father is a rubber dealer and his mother is a retired school principal.
When the couple married, Suraj received a dowry from Uthra’s parents of 768 grams of gold (worth about $32,000 at current prices), a Suzuki sedan, and 400,000 rupees in cash. She also receives 8,000 rupees a month from her parents ‘to look after their daughter’.
Uthra was treated for 52 days and and required three painful operations to heal his aching leg. He had been bitten by Russell’s rattlesnake – a very venomous earth-colored snake. This snake kills a lot in India.
Killing with Cobras
Then on the night of May 6, investigators said, while Uthra was still in recovery, he received a glass of fruit juice from Suraj mixed with sedatives. When the mixture had placed it on the bottom, Suraj took out a container with a cobra, turned it over, and dropped the five -foot -long snake on his sleeping wife.
But instead of attacking him, the snake slithered away. Suraj picks it up and throws it at Uthra, but again it slides.
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Indian cobra illustration (iStock)— |
Suraj tries a third time–he grabs the snake then presses his head against Uthra’s left arm. The cobra used the fangs in the front of its mouth, biting it twice. Then sneak up on the shelf in the room and stay there all night.
“Cobras don’t bite unless you provoke them, Suraj has to catch him by his hood and force him to bite his wife,” said Mavish Kumar, a herpetologist.
Investigators reveal that Suraj washed the juice glass, destroyed the stick he used to safely handle the snake and deleted the incriminating call log on his cell phone.
When Uthra’s mother entered the room the next morning, she told police she saw her daughter lying in bed with “her mouth open, and her left hand hanging to one side”.
She says Suraj is also in the room.
“Why don’t you check if he’s awake?” said Manimekhala Vijayan asking his son-in-law.
“I don’t want to disturb her sleep,” Suraj told her.
The family took Uthra to the hospital, where doctors declared him dead from poisoning and called the police.
The autopsy report found two pairs of stab wounds, less than an inch apart, on his left arm. Samples of blood and offal revealed the presence of cobra venom and sedatives. Cobra venom can kill in a matter of hours by paralyzing the respiratory muscles.
On the report of his in-laws, the police arrested Suraj on May 24 in connection with the unusual death of his wife. After a 78-day investigation and with allegations reaching over 1,000 pages, the trial began.
More than 90 people, including herpetologists and doctors, testified. Prosecutors built their case using Suraj’s call records, internet history, a dead cobra dug up from the back garden, a pile of tranquilizers in the family car and evidence that he bought not one but two snakes.
See also the video ‘Residents of Lumajang Restless with Cobra Terror, Often Enter Homes!’:
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