The distraught wife of a $1 million lottery winner, who died of cyanide poisoning, has demanded that the truth behind her husband's mysterious death should be brought out soon, as the authorities here prepared to exhume the body of the Indian-American businessman.

"I want the truth to come out in the investigation, the sooner the better," said Shabana Ansari, the wife of 46-year-old Urooj Khan. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the cheque. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone."

Khan died unexpectedly in July, just weeks after winning a million-dollar lottery prize at a 7-Eleven store. The medical examiner's office declared his death to be from natural causes. By December, toxicology tests showed that Khan had died of a lethal amount of cyanide.