Parents suspect husband’s role in snakebite death

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Kollam:  23.05.2020

The parents of a suspected snakebite victim have approached the police with a complaint, demanding a probe into the role of her husband in the woman’s death.

The husband, too, lodged a complaint, saying his wife’s brother was responsible for her death.

Uthra, 25, was found unconscious in the bedroom of her ancestral house at Anchal, where she had been living with her husband and ayear-old son on May 7. She was declared dead by the doctors of a nearby hospital.

Later, a cobra found hiding under her cot, was killed. Uthra was recuperating after she had been bitten by a viper on March 2 at her husband’s house near Adoor.

Uthra’s parents, in their complaint to Kollam rural police superintendent said her husband Sooraj, known to a few snake catchers, used to play with snakes, and he might have had brought the snake into the house with the intention of harming her. Her relatives also felt that the snake had no chance to slither into the closed, air-conditioned room.

The complaint also mentioned that Uthra, days before her death, had told her parents about finding a snake at her in-law’s house, and Sooraj caught it with ease and put it in a sack. The woman’s parents also said some of the gold ornaments presented to her had been missing.

Rural SP Harisankar had forwarded the complaint the to the district crime branch. Police were now awaiting the post-mortem report.