The special police team probing the Koodathayi serial murder case filed the sixth and final chargesheet in the killing of Annamma Thomas before the Thamarassery Judicial First Class Magistrate's Court-II in Kozhikode district on Monday.
Unlike the previous chargesheets, only Jolly Joseph, the prime accused in all other cases, has been arraigned on the charge of killing her mother-in-law.
First murder
Annamma, a retired school and mother of her first husband Roy Thomas, was the first of the murders Jolly had carried out to get hold of the ancestral property.
The chargesheet, running into several hundred pages, said that Jolly had poisoned to death Annamma, after lacing her mutton soup with “Dog Kill” , a poison, on August 22, 2002.
The Koodathayi murders pertain to the six sensational cases in which the prime accused Jolly Joseph allegedly finished off two branches of the Ponnamattom ancestral family after giving them poison or cyanide-laced food or drink over a period of 14 years. Cyanide had not been used only in the case of Annamma.
The chargesheet said that the Jolly tricked Annamma into believing that she was an MCom graduate. Subsequently her mother-in-law persuaded her to undergo BEd course so as to take up teaching profession in future.
Thus Jolly was forced to stay at Pala to give the impression that she was doing her BEd course. She decided to kill Annamma when she suspected and questioned her about her educational qualifications.
Witnesses
A total of 129 witnesses’ names, including the doctors who prescribed the animal poison, have been submitted to the court.
Previously Jolly had told the investigators that she was well aware of the dangers of pesticides as she hailed from an agricultural family. She had laced the mutton soup with the poison a day before she poisoned Annamma to death.