What provoked Jaya Mol to suddenly murder her 14-year-old son Jithu Job, burn his body and dump it in an empty plot? The police say they have her confession that she had got angry at her son for insisting to visit his grandparent’s house despite her refusal. Jaya Mol’s husband,  Job John said that she used to get angry easily and even became violent a couple of times.

Job told Mathrubhumi News that Jaya had the habit of needlessly worrying about things.

“She would get easily provoked. She used to frequently fight with the kids and it was more often with Jithu. She didn’t like anyone making fun of her. She would get angry if the kids said something about her nature. I tried to avoid any kind of confrontation with her as I knew she would turn violent. I had experienced it a couple of times, therefore I avoided getting into a fight with her,” he said.

From this statement from Job, what could be assumed is that Jaya Mol had the habit of getting tensed easily. The family was financially well off. Yet she used to be worried about how would they live without money, the future of the kids, about themselves and their future, he said.

Job, however, said that Jaya Mol is a woman who would go on worrying unnecessarily about things.

“She would easily get tensed over tiny issues like what if the children don’t study well. She used to be alone at home after I left for work and the children left for school and college. She would say, ‘I won’t get anything from my family as ancestral property, everything will be given to my siblings’. She used to say how we would move on after we get our daughter married off, after spending our savings for that,” he said.

But her rage would soon subside and she would calm down in five minutes, he said.

“My son used to make fun of her saying that her family would not give her share of property due to her behavior and she used to get very angry. I met her after the police brought her for evidence collection. When I asked what she did to our son, she told me that thought she loved her son the most he made fun of her. She said that in her anger she pushed him into the fire,” Job told the channel.

Mental health issues?

Police are yet to confirm if Jaya Mol has any mental health issues. The police took her to the Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram and she was examined by a psychiatrist on Thursday.

According to the police, she needs to have two or more sittings with the doctors, for them to ascertain if there really was a problem.

Kollam City Police Commissioner A Sreenivas told TNM that Jaya was under mental stress, but police cannot conclude that there are major issues.

“More sittings are needed to conclude that she has major mental issues… she has minor issues though,” he said.

When asked if the team had confirmed the instant provocation for the murder, the Commissioner said that the investigation was on and they could not jump to any conclusions. It has been reported that Jaya Mol used to hate Jithu going to Job’s parents’ house, which is nearby.

“The family members are in utter shock. We were not able to take a detailed statement from them. We need to take a statement from the grandmother to confirm the said reasons and also from Jaya Mol’s daughter,” he said.

Though the police are yet to reach a conclusion, the macabre murder has churned much discussion on mental health.

State Mental Health Authority Secretary Dr Jayaprakash KP told TNM that mental health remains one of the most neglected areas in the state.

“Denying treatment for psychological issues is a human rights violation. There are at least 15,000 mentally ill homeless people in the state, who are either wandering on the streets or housed in mental asylums. If Jaya Mol’s husband is saying that she was showing symptoms of being disturbed, she should have been given treatment much early.”

He added that stigma was preventing people from getting medical help. “Recently, an educated recently woman came to me with her husband who has severe mental health issues. I asked her to admit him in a hospital, but she wasn’t willing. We can’t treat anyone till the relatives give in writing that the patient should be treated. If one observed some of the suicides and murders in the state recently, it is evident that these people had mental health issues,” he said.