Oct 14, 2021: An Indian man who used a cobra and a viper to kill his wife has been sentenced to a rare double life sentence, which the prosecution has called “the rarest case”.

South Kerala state prosecutor said 28-year-old Suraj Kumar threw a highly poisonous Russell’s viper snake at his wife Uthra, leaving her in hospital for about two months.

When she recovered at her parents’ house, he obtained a cobra from the snake handler and threw it at her sleeping wife. Its poisonous bite killed the 25-year-old woman in May 2020.

Kumar was arrested from his home last year when Uthra’s parents suspected that their daughter was being harassed for more dowry. The woman’s parents said Kumar tried to seize her property after her death. On Monday, a court in Kerala’s Kollam district convicted Kumar of murdering and poisoning his wife and previous attempts to kill her using Russell’s wiper.

Local media reported that Judge M Manoj on Wednesday sentenced the convict to two consecutive life sentences, but did not accept the prosecution’s demand for the death sentence, given his age and the opportunity for correction.

Suraj did not plead guilty, but police said his phone records showed he was in contact with snake handlers and had seen a video of the snake on the Internet before it was killed in Kollam in March last year.

Prosecutors said Suraj stayed in the room with Athra after the cobra bit her and went back to her morning routine the next day when the woman’s mother warned her. According to the prosecutor, the diabolical plan to end the woman’s life who was already bedridden makes it a rare case and hence the call for a double life sentence.

It is possible that Suraj “provoked the reptile to bite,” said Vava Suresh, a snake handler.

Uthra came from a wealthy family but her husband, a bank worker, was not well off.

Their wedding included a large dowry, including a new car and Rs. 500,000 (approximately $6,640). According to media reports, Kumar’s family was charged with conspiracy when some of Uthra’s gold was found buried near his house a few days after the murder.

India’s Supreme Court has recently warned of the trend of snake bites as it has denied bail to a woman and her “lover” who is accused of attacking her mother-in-law in the northern state of Rajasthan in 2019 using a cobra.

Prosecutor G Mohan Raj said the biggest challenge in the Kerala case was to prove that the snake bite was a murder, adding that a test was presented to the court which differentiated between natural and affected bite marks.

In recent years, courts have acquitted two suspects in similar cases after failing to prove that venomous snakes were used as “murder weapons”, The Hindu reported.

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