Kannammal of Tirupur had buried all three bodies in the backyard of her house

TIRUPUR: Like in Kerala 's Koodathayi where Jollyamma's arrest brought to light several murders, Kannammal of Tirupur, who was arrested last week for poisoning and then beating to death her brother and his wife, has now confessed to police that she had also killed her daughter's mother-in-law five months ago.

The 54-year-old woman buried all three bodies in the backyard of her house at Utthandakumaravalasu in Senathipalayam panchayat. Her first victim was the mother of her son-in-law, Nagendran, 30. Nagendran, himself, has been arrested for helping Kannammal kill her younger brother Selvaraj, 49, and his wife Vasanthamani, 42.

Nagendran had no idea his mother, Rajamani, 60, was dead, police said. Kannammal and her daughter Poongodi had convinced him his mother had quarrelled with them and vowed not to visit them again. Nagendran was away at his sister’s home in Bengaluru, trying to get over his alcohol addiction, when Kannammal and Poongodi invited his mother to their home five months ago and murdered her. They were upset with the woman for ‘insulting’ Poongodi. Police said Poongodi first hacked the woman on the neck before Kannammal held a cloth over her nose and mouth to asphyxiate her.

When Nagendran came back from Bengaluru, they spun him a story that his mother, who lived in Erode , was also upset with her children, accusing them of not looking after her, police said.

Emboldened by the fact that no one had found out about Rajamani’s murder even after five months, Kannammal, who works in a spinning mill, then decided to do away with her brother because she was upset with him for giving her only Rs1 lakh instead of the Rs3 lakh she demanded after he had sold some ancestral property. On October 10, Selvaraj and his wife visited Kannammal to invite her to their son’s marriage. Police said Kannammal mixed sedatives in their food and bludgeoned them to death with the help of her son-in-law and his friend Elango.

Police said Nagendran helped Kannammal kill her brother as he bore a grudge against the man for opposing his marriage to Poongodi on the grounds that they belonged to two different intermediate castes.

