A Kerala man who is accused of murdering his parents, sister and another relative in April last year has been admitted to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College in a serious condition.

Cadell Jeanson Raja was rushed from the Poojapura Central Jail, where he is an under trial, after he choked on his food following an epileptic seizure.

Cadell has been admitted to the Intense Care Unit (ICU), according to hospital authorities, and is currently on the ventilator.

“He was brought to the hospital around 5 am and since then, he has been kept on the ventilator. His condition continues to be critical,” confirmed a hospital official.

Cadell was arrested in April last year for murdering his parents – Dr Jean Padma, a retired medical superintendent in General Hospital, and Professor Raj Thankam – his sister, Caroline, and his relative, Lalitha, in his house in Nanthencode. The police had launched a massive manhunt to arrest him, and he was finally nabbed when he was getting off a train from Chennai at the Thampanoor station.

Officials later said that Cadell confessed to killing his family as part of an occult ritual. The killings had taken place over two days and he had wired the house to explode later, in a bid to destroy all evidence.

Cadell was in Australia, studying artificial intelligence engineering, before he returned to Kerala in 2009. He was employed as a video game programmer. His sister, Caroline, was pursuing her MBBS in China and had come home on a vacation.