Five persons, including a woman and an occultist, have been arrested in connection with the conspiracy to murder Additional District and Sessions Judge Mahendra Kumar Tripathi and his son by poisoning, police said on Wednesday, 29 July.
The arrests were made after the police received the post-mortem reports that said the two deaths had occurred due to poisoning. Police had earlier maintained that the two had died of suspected food poisoning.
Betul Superintendent of Police Simala Prasad said that the arrests were made from Rewa and Chhindwara and the questioning of the accused was on.
He said that the woman ran an NGO and had been advising the late judge and his family on religious and occult rituals and prayers to be performed to get rid of problems. She had sent some ‘samagri’ to the judge and advised them to consume it by mixing it in flour they used to make loaves, the police said.
The poison was allegedly mixed in the flour that was used in the preparation of loaves, in which the 'samagri' was mixed, which the judge and his sons consumed in dinner on 20 July. The flour has since been sent to a state-level food testing laboratory for testing.
Police had said the health of the judge (50) and his two sons, including Abhinay Raj Monu (25), had started deteriorating after they ate food prepared by his wife. The condition of the second son had improved after treatment while the judge's wife did not fall ill as she had not consumed the loaves that night.
MK Tripathi, posted in Betul, was shifted to a Nagpur hospital on 24 July after his condition did not improve. He died on 26 July during treatment at the hospital while his son was declared brought dead a day earlier.
MK Tripathi's second son Ashish Raj told the media that accused woman Sandhya Singh was in contact with her father for the last 10 years. He alleged that she had brought a powder which she claimed would boost immunity and handed it over to the family for consumption. Even the flour they used to make loaves was brought by her, he claimed.
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