Court extends police custody of three accused in Kozhikode serial murder case

A local court here on Wednesday extended the police custody of three accused in the Kozhikode serial murder case by two days.

The Thamarassery Judicial first class magistrate court directed the police to produce all three accused before the court on Friday evening. The accused were produced before the court on completion of their police remand.

The court had on October 10 sent the accused to police remand for six days.

The police had arrested Jolly Shaju, the prime suspect, along with two of her partners M S Mathew and P Prajikumar for allegedly using cyanide to kill six members of a family in Koodathayi village of Kerala's Kozhikode district between 2002 and 2016.

The arrests were made after the forensic experts exhumed the mortal remains of the victims from their graves and did the post-mortem.

The accused will now be produced before the court on October 16 at the end of their remand period.

The deaths in the family took place between 2002 and 2016. While the first death, which is now being suspected to be a murder, was of Jolly's mother-in-law, the most recent one to die in the family was a relative and mother of a two-year-old, named Sily.

Jolly, the prime accused, had earlier this week admitted that she killed them all her family members. The Investigating Officer (IO) handling the case had said she killed them in order to take away the property and marry Shaju Zacharia, Sily's husband.