Following the death of a 12-year-old boy in Koyilandy in Kerala’s Kozhikode district last week, the police arrested his paternal aunt on Saturday, April 22. Police said that Thahira murdered her nephew Ahmed Hassan Rifai by feeding him ice cream mixed with rat poison. Initially it was suspected that the Class 6 student died due to food poisoning, but a postmortem revealed that the ice cream he consumed had rat poison in it. There are reports that Thahira had aimed to kill other members of the family too.
Thahira is the sister of Rifai’s father Muhammed Ali. On April 16, when Rifai’s mother and siblings were away, she visited their house and gave him ice cream. Only Rifai and his grandmother were at home at that time. Police have recovered CCTV visuals from a supermarket in Koyilandy’s Arikkulam where Thahira was seen buying the ice cream. Police also found the remaining rat poison from an unused well near Thahira’s house in Arikkulam. Police told TNM that the motive for the murder was a family dispute and that the accused had been planning the murder for a while.
Rifai developed vomiting immediately after eating the ice cream. Initially he was taken to the Koyilandy taluk hospital and later shifted to a private hospital in Kozhikode. But he died on April 17, following which the family expressed suspicions and a postmortem was carried out. By then the police had registered a case of unnatural death and begun an investigation.
As per the accused’s initial statements to the police, she had targeted Rifai’s mother and the boy had died by accident. But the police suspect that she wanted to kill the entire family as she had bought a family pack of the ice cream.
Neighbours have given statements that Thahira had spoken to them while returning from Rifai’s house and there had been nothing suspicious about her behaviour.
The case is being investigated by a team headed by Vadakara Deputy Superintendent of Police R Haridas.