Indian man gets double life sentence for killing wife using cobra

Man in Kerala convicted for murdering wife by making a cobra bite her while she was sleeping handed the rare punishment.

An Indian man who used a cobra and a viper to murder his wife has been handed a double life sentence in what prosecutors have called the “rarest of rare” cases.

Sooraj Kumar, 28, set loose a highly venomous Russell’s viper snake on his wife Uthra that left her in hospital for almost two months, prosecutors in the southern Kerala state said.

While she recovered at her parents’ house, he obtained a cobra from a snake handler and threw it at his sleeping wife. Its poisonous bite killed the 25-year-old woman in May 2020.