Delhi man poisons wife, her family with thallium

The poison killed his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and left his wife comatose. The man’s father-in-law and the household help also had to undergo treatment

The Delhi Police have arrested a resident of south Delhi’s Greater Kailash for allegedly administering thallium to his wife and her family. Police said the man had poisoned his in-laws’ dinner on January 31 this year, which killed his mother-in-law and sister-in-law and left his wife comatose. The man’s father-in-law and the household help also had to undergo treatment. Senior officers said that police recovered a small glass bottle with thallium from the arrested man’s house.

Representational image. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Deputy commissioner of police (west) Urvija Goel said on March 22, Inderpuri police station was informed that a woman named Anita Devi Sharma died at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital; thallium was detected in her blood and urine samples. The woman had been under treatment for over a month.

“Since thallium is a poisonous substance, efforts to trace the source of thallium administered to the woman were made. During preliminary enquiry it was found that the woman’s older daughter Divya, married to one Varun Arora, who lived in Greater Kailash Part-1, was is also admitted in the ICU ward of the same hospital with thallium poisoning. She is on ventilator support,” the DCP said.

Goel said further probe revealed that Divya’s younger sister Priyanka also died of thallium poisoning while undergoing a treatment at BL Kapoor Hospital on February 15. “We also found that Anita’s husband Devender Mohan Sharma also showed symptoms of thallium poisoning. A maid who was working in the couple’s house had also been treated at RML Hospital for similar symptoms. We realised that the family was possibly poisoned with thallium at the same time,” she said.

The bodies of the two women were shifted to RML Hospital and a detailed autopsy was conducted by a board of doctors. A forensic and crime team also reached the couple’s house to carry out a detailed inspection.

Goel said, during initial questionings, it was found that Divya’s husband Varun Arora had visited the Sharma family on January and cooked them fish. He served the fish to the entire family except his Divya’s twins. “Since the chain of events was triggered after the dinner, Arora was detained for questioning. When he was confronted with facts, Arora admitted to have procured thallium and administered it to his mother-in-law Anita, wife Divya, father-in-law Devender Mohan and Priyanka, his sister-in-law. He revealed that he had poisoned them to take revenge as they had been allegedly repeatedly humiliating him,” the officer said.

Arora told the police that after his father’s death last year, his wife Divya had conceived. “He believed that his father was being reincarnated as his son. However, Divya developed some complications and aborted the child on the advice of her parents and sister, against Arora’s wishes. “He also said that since he was not doing any job, his in-laws used to repeatedly taunt him,” the DCP said.

The DCP said at Arora’s instance, the thallium used in the murders was recovered from his house in Greater Kailash. “We have also recovered his mobile phone that he had used to procure the thallium,” she said.

During Arora’s interrogation, police found that he had searched the Internet on “how to make someone very sick”. “That is how he got the idea of using thallium. When our teams searched his laptop, we found his search history was deleted. So far we did not find any evidence of him having got the idea from Saddam Hussain,” Goel said.