A father who strangled his wife and their two young children and was then Tasered after holding a knife to his own throat has been jailed for life. Saju Chelavalel was ordered to serve a minimum term of 40 years after a judge was told the 52-year-old killed NHS nurse Anju Asok while he was drunk last December, in the mistaken belief that she had been unfaithful to him.
Northampton Crown Court was told Chelavalel had more than four hours “to reflect on whether to kill his children” before using a dressing gown cord to kill six-year-old son Jeeva Saju and their daughter Janvi Saju, aged four. Chelavalel, originally from Kerala in India, sobbed in the dock with his head bowed on Monday as an audio recording was played to the court on which his wife could be heard coughing and his children could be heard talking.
The court was told the recording also captured the sound of a blender being used to make a “toxic” mixture of chocolate and pills intended to send the children to sleep. Body worn video footage released by Northamptonshire Police after the hearing showed the killer urging police to shoot him at his home in Kettering, where he also left instructions for his own and his family’s bodies to be cremated in India.
The footage, filmed after officers broke the glass in a patio door to gain access to the ground-floor flat in Petherton Court, shows them issuing repeated warnings for Chelavalel to drop a knife before his arrest. Ms Asok, aged 35, worked as a nurse at Kettering General Hospital.
Her body was found on the floor of a bedroom at the flat, while the children’s bodies were found next to each other on a double bed in a different room. Passing sentence, High Court judge Mr Justice Pepperall told Chelavalel his actions had been brutal and “extraordinarily selfish”.
The judge said both child victims would have been “terrified and deeply traumatised” after hearing their mother’s murder. Both children could have been brought up by other relatives, the judge told Chelavalel, who he said had killed his wife in a “fit of rage” after a minor argument.
The judge said: “Fuelled by alcohol, wallowing in self-pity, engulfed in your resentment at your wife’s perceived infidelity, you instead chose to snuff out their young and precious lives.”
