Two years after the horrific Attingal Twin Murder case, the two accused Nino Mathew and Anu Shanthi were found guilty of murder by the Thriruvananthapuram principal sessions court. On Monday, the Thriruvananthapuram principal sessions judge awarded the death sentence to the prime accused Nino Mathew.
Calling it a rarest-of-rare crime, Judge V Shircy also sentenced Anu Shanthi to life imprisonment saying that she is an insult to motherhood.
Here is how the case unfolded:
On the afternoon of April 16, 2014, 57-year-old Vijayamma, also known as Omana, was alone at her home in Attingal with her 4-year-old granddaughter Swastika, when an unsuspected visitor dropped in.
Nino Mathew (40), a software engineer in Technopark, introduced himself as her son Lijeesh's friend who had come to invite him for a wedding.
Lijeesh had gone out nearby for some work and Nino asked Omana to call him home, which the latter promptly did. Lijeesh's wife, Omana's daughter-in-law and Swastika's mother Anu Shanthi (30) was at work at the time.
What took place next would give Attingal its horrific suffix — the twin murder case.
Nino brutally stabbed Omana and Swastika to death, and waited for almost half-an-hour for Lijeesh to come home. Lijeesh too was attacked, but escaped the attempt on his life with injuries and alerted the neighbours.
It was then that Nino's plan fell apart.
The police solved the crime in 24 hours — they first arrested Nino, who confessed to the crime, and later shockingly, Anu Shanthi, his paramour.
The murders were planned after Anu’s husband Lijeesh objected to her extra marital affair with Nino. After recording Nino’s and Anu's arrests, the police recovered murder weapons from Nino’s house — a matchete and a baseball bat, a towel that was used to wipe the weapons clean and gold ornaments that he stole from the bodies to make it look like a robbery attempt.
Principal Session Judge V Shircy said, "The first accused does not deserve any mercy. He took a young life. The child was younger than his own daughter. She was not even the size of the weapons he used. Still, he attacked her in a manner that her brain was shattered all over. He then went on to kill a hapless woman. There were 14 cuts on her head. The accused do not deserve to live, the judge held."
The duo has been charged of murder, conspiracy, attempt to destroy evidence and theft. After the prosecution examined as many as 49 witnesses, 85 exhibits and 41 material objects, the judge found Anu equally guilty as she was aware of Nino Mathew’s plans.
A case of transmitting obscene material in electronic form was also charged against the duo, after the police found recovered self-made videos of Nino’s sexual acts with Anu Shanthi in his laptop and mobile phone.
According to the police, the murder was "well-planned and premeditated, committed with the intention of making it appear as one committed by burglars and to later enable the two accused to live together".
Anu sent pictures of the layout of the house to Nino through WhatsApp and the duo also planned an escape route for him.
While Nino claimed that he did not commit the crime, Anu was quoted by the media as saying, "Don't term me as a mother who killed her own baby."