District court to pronounce sentence in mass family killing case that shocked capital in 2017

A luxuriously large house nestled in a leafy cul-de-sac in the upscale Bains Compound neighbourhood near the official residences of cabinet ministers in the capital became the horrific scene of a mass family killing in April 2017. 

A luxuriously large house nestled in a leafy cul-de-sac in the upscale Bains Compound neighbourhood near the official residences of cabinet ministers in the capital became the horrific scene of a mass family killing in April 2017. 

On Monday, a district court in Thiruvananthapuram will likely attempt to reach closure in the appalling killings which shocked the public conscience and left the police and society grappling for answers.

The court will likely pass its verdict on Cadell Jeansen Raja, the sole accused in the “one-by-one execution-style killings” of his father, Professor Raja Thankam, his mother, Dr Raja Thankam, a cardiologist, sister Caroll, a medical graduate from a university in China, and his congenitally blind aunt, Lalitha Gene.

The prosecution case was that Mr Raja, currently the sole surviving heir to the family’s immense fortune, including a vast plantation in Tamil Nadu, had summoned his victims to his upstairs room under different pretexts and fatally axed them from behind. The murders took place over three days, commencing April 5, 2017.

Emergency responders found the partially burned bodies of the victims after neighbours reported a fire on April 8. A week later, the police arrested Mr Raja, who decamped to Chennai and recorded minor burn injuries on his hand.

The police recovered a “Stanley’s Carpenter Axe”, which Mr Raja had allegedly purchased online. They found a cache of violent video games in his room, crammed with computers and rigged with gaming devices.