Attingal twin murder case: Kerala HC commutes death sentence of prime accused
The Kerala High Court, on Friday, May 24, has commuted the death sentence of one of the convicts in the 2014 Attingal twin murder case to life imprisonment. A Division Bench of Justices PB Suresh Kumar and Johnson John was hearing appeal petitions filed by the convicts Nino Mathew and Anu Shanthi challenging their convictions and against Nino’s death sentence. The Thriruvananthapuram Principal sessions judge, in 2016, awarded death sentence to the prime accused Nino and life sentence to co-convict Anu Shanthi.
The court, commuting his sentence, stated that Nino would not be eligible for a remission of the sentence for 25 years. However, the bench upheld the life sentence of Anu Shanthi.
Nino and Anu, former Technopark employees, were found guilty of murdering Anu Shanthi’s mother-in-law Omana (60), and her three-year-old daughter Swastika, after Anu’s husband Lijeesh objected to her extra marital affair with Nino. Lijeesh, however, escaped the murder attempt and sustained injuries.
The duo are charged with murder, conspiracy, attempt to destroy evidence and theft, as well as transmitting obscene material in electronic form. The lower court found Anu Shanthi equally guilty as she was aware of Nino Mathew’s plans, and called it a rarest-of-rare crime and that she is an insult to motherhood. The crime was solved within 24 hours and a charge sheet filed on the 83rd day of the crime.
It is to be noted that in 2023, the Kerala High Court passed an order to conduct mitigation investigation in two murder cases – rape and murder of Dalit student Jisha and the Attingal double murder case – where convicts were awarded death penalty. This was the first time that the court passed such an order.
On April 16, 2014, 57-year-old Vijayamma alias Omana was alone at her home in Attingal with her four-year-old granddaughter Swastika, when Nino Mathew came to the house. He introduced himself as her son Lijeesh's friend and had come to invite him for a wedding. Lijeesh’s wife Anu Shanthi was reportedly at work at the time.
After Vijayamma called Lijeesh and informed him about his friend’s visit, Nino brutally stabbed Omana and Swastika to death, and waited for almost half-an-hour for Lijeesh to come home. Nino tried to attack Lijeesh but he escaped with injuries and alerted the neighbours.
After the police arrested him, he confessed to the crime, and named Anu as his paramour. The murders had been planned after Lijeesh objected to her extra marital affair with Nino. The police recovered murder weapons from Nino’s house — a matchete and a baseball bat, a towel that was used to wipe the weapons clean and gold ornaments that he stole from the bodies to make it look like a robbery attempt.