17 years of husband’s fight ends up in his arrest for his wife’s murder

Pathanamthitta: The long-standing mystery surrounding the gruesome murder of Ramadevi in Kerala's Pathanamthitta district has finally been solved, as her husband, Janardhanan Nair, was arrested on Tuesday for the heinous crime.

The murder, which occurred on May 26, 2006, had initially led investigators to believe that a migrant labourer from Tamil Nadu was the prime suspect. However, alleged discrepancies in Janardhanan's statements and a recent re-examination of forensic evidence ultimately led to his arrest.

Janardhanan, now a 75-year-old retired postal department employee, had petitioned the High Court in 2007 to transfer the investigation to the Crime Branch, claiming that the police had failed to trace the true culprit.

According to the Crime Branch, recent forensic examinations uncovered strands of hair clenched in the fist of the deceased, which were identified as belonging to Janardhanan. Investigators gradually pieced together the puzzle and concluded that he had allegedly murdered Ramadevi due to lingering doubts about her fidelity, a factor that had often triggered heated arguments between the couple.

At the time of the incident, Janardhanan, then a senior accountant in Alappuzha district, had claimed to have discovered his wife's lifeless body in a pool of blood inside their home. He had also reported the theft of some of Ramadevi's ornaments, suggesting a possible robbery gone wrong. However, suspicions soon shifted to the 26-year-old Tamil labourer who had recently moved into the neighbourhood, only to vanish following the murder.

Inspired by crime thriller movies, Janardhanan attempted to divert suspicion by filing a petition in the High Court, advocating for the case to be transferred to the Crime Branch. However, his scheme began to unravel when investigators discovered the abandoned wife of the Tamil suspect, who revealed that he had left her years ago, unaware of his whereabouts.

The breakthrough in the investigation occurred when the forensic report, previously unexplored due to the suspect's disappearance, was revisited. Strands of hair found clenched in Ramadevi's fist were eventually matched to Janardhanan. Additionally, the reconstruction of the crime scene disproved Janardhanan's account of accessing the locked door through an overhead lattice structure, exposing his attempts to mislead the investigation.