Pinarayi, Kannur: The police team investigating the mass murder in a family have refused to buy the 'confession' of accused Soumya, who said that she alone plotted and poisoned her parents and daughter to death. They are looking at the possible involvement of others, even as three young men linked to her remain in custody. The police, however, are yet to find evidence against them.

Soumya, 28, whose parents and daughter died of poisoning in a span of four months, has been remanded to four days in police custody. Her daughter Aishwarya, 9, died on January 21 this year after she was admitted to a hospital following a bout of vomiting. The woman's mother Kamala, 65, died under a similar situation on April 7, while the father, Kunhikannan, 80, died on April 13 after he was admitted to a hospital with vomiting and other symptoms.

Traces of rat poison was found on the three bodies and Soumya was arrested on Tuesday night.

Soumya's younger daughter, a year-and-a-half-old Keerthana, had died in 2012 under similar circumstances. The woman has claimed it was a natural death, but the police are probing if that was also a murder. The police remand report says the woman carried out the murders to eliminate family members who objected to her immoral life.

The police say Soumya had affairs with several men after after she got separated from her husband, and acquaintance with a sex worker from Iritti. She had told the police that she got furious with her daughter Aishwarya because the child saw her with two other men in unacceptable situations inside her room. She mixed rat poison in her rice and fried fish. Doctors could not rescue her.

There was no action against her as the child's death was not taken as a murder. Having escaped charges, Soumya went ahead and eliminated her parents by poisoning them in the same style.

The police gathered evidence from Soumya's house in Padannakara before she was presented in the court on Wednesday. They have seized food mixed with poison, utensils used for the mixing, ashes of burnt rat poison packets, and a box in which poison was stored.

Crowd boos Soumya

After learning that Soumya would be brought for evidence gathering, a crowd had gathered at her house. They booed at Soumya and attempted to assault her. Two autorickshaw drivers who were taken into custody for buying rat poison for Soumya were let off after it was found that they had no knowledge of the murder plan.

The murder of the child and those of the parents have been registered as two different cases. Soumya's arrest in the second case will be registered on Thursday.

Read more: latest Kerala news