Haunting CCTV images show two excited young boys shopping for sweets and crisps with their dad – hours before he murdered them.
Evil Sanjeev Chada told his children Eoghan, 10, and five-year-old Ruairi they were going on a camping trip – then strangled them in his car.
Ten years on from the crime that shocked the nation, gardai and the boys’ heartbroken mum Kathleen reveal shocking details of the case.
Read More : 'This hasn’t sunk in' - Christy Dignam's Aslan bandmates praying for a miracle
They tell how double killer Chada went for a coffee as he drove around with his kids’ dead bodies in the boot; Rang Kathleen from a stranger’s mobile phone and casually told her they were dead; Whimpered a pathetic “I’m sorry” to his wife in court after being convicted; Planned to kill her too in a murder suicide to cover up his gambling debts.
The horrors of the double murder are recalled in The Case I Can’t Forget which airs on RTE One on Monday night. In the documentary, Superintendant Martin Walker tells how he headed up the hunt for the Chada children after they were reported missing.
Sanjeev Chada told his then-wife Kathleen on July 28, 2013 he was taking them bowling in Carlow, but they never came home. The search prompted gardai to launch the first ever CRI (Child Rescue Ireland) Alert, under new regulations brought in the previous year.
Supt Walker said: “They left the house at 6pm but I found out the bowling alley was closed at 6pm, so that was never his destination. It suggested an ulterior motive. I had a gut feeling there was something terribly wrong here.”
When he learned that Chada had been questioned by gardai days earlier and admitted embezzling €56,000 from a community fund, the search took on a new urgency.
An alert was issued for Chada’s car, a green Ford Focus, and officers began a trawl of CCTV as soon as businesses opened on Monday.
Supt Walker said; “They were caught on CCTV in a retail outlet in Carlow at 7.30pm. You could see the two little boys running around buying sweets and Tayto, and one bought a magazine.
“It appeared they were stocking up for a journey. My gut feeling was there was something terribly wrong.”
Hours later gardai in Mayo were alerted to a car crash outside Westport – as Chada was ringing his wife to break the horrific news.
Superintendant Gary Walsh recalled: “There was a collision and one [person] noticed car seats. One of the witnesses went to the boot and opened it, and made the shocking, traumatic discovery of Eoghan and Ruairi.”
Chada had driven the car at speed into a stone wall just outside Westport after hearing the CRI appeal on the radio. Trapped inside the car but still conscious, he borrowed a mobile phone from one of the people at the scene and rang Kathleen.
She revealed: “I got a phone call, I answered. Immediately I knew it was Sanj on the other end of the line. I think he started off the conversation with ‘there’s been a crash’. I was like ‘are the boys okay?’ and he actually said ‘no, they’re dead in the back’.”
Fighting back tears she added: “I lost it at that point, I collapsed like I was falling into a black hole. How do you tell somebody that their children have been killed?
“All you can ever do is do it with as much care and empathy as is possible – and he didn’t even give me that.”
A half-eaten punnet of strawberries – purchased the previous evening at Tesco in Carlow – led gardai to pinpoint the scene of the murders. It was found discarded in a laneway near Ballintubber Abbey along with some used baby wipes.
Supt Walsh said: “Now we had our crime scene. This is the location where Sanjeev Chada murdered his two children. We interviewed him, he was very subdued. He gave very little initially but as time went on he started to divulge more.
“When they didn’t go bowling the boys asked questions, and he said they were going on a camping trip. They were probably content in the car, that they were going camping with their dad.”
He continued: “All this time, Sanjeev tried to give the impression the boys’ deaths were very peaceful. But we knew from the post mortem results that wasn’t the case.
“It took a lot of questions to get him to the point of admitting that, ‘okay, this was a more violent encounter in the car than I wanted to tell you initially’.”
Taking him by surprise so he couldn’t fight him off, cowardly Chada choked his eldest son Eoghan first.
Then as Ruairi sat weeping in the back of the car he took the younger boy onto his lap, told him everything would be okay, and strangled him too.
Supt Walsh said: “He decided to play God, he decided the children would be better off dead than alive and finding out he was a thief.”
Satellite navigation showed Chada leaving Ballintubber around 5.30am and transferring the bodies to the boot at 6.50am.
Shortly afterwards, he stopped at a garage in the village of Kilkelly and bought petrol and a cup of coffee.
Right up to the day of his murder trial, Kathleen didn’t know whether the monster was going to plead guilty or not guilty. She said: “There’s a part of me that says it would be easier if he was insane, because it would be an answer...
“My husband was insane and he killed our two children as opposed to my husband was evil and narcissistic and chose to take the lives of our two beautiful boys for his own purposes.”
Kathleen delivered a powerful victim impact statement as Chada was sentenced to life in prison on October 14, 2014. He is serving his sentence at Arbour Hill.
Kathleen revealed: “It was my one opportunity to talk to him without talking to him so it was important.
“I brought a photograph of Eoghan and Ruairi with me and I put it for the judge to see, because sometimes the victim can be forgotten in this process and I didn’t want that to happen.
“I had to walk past Sanj to get back to where I was sitting. As I walked past he did whisper the words ‘I’m sorry’. I don’t know how sorry he truly is, there is no justification in this world or beyond to explain what he did.”
Six weeks after the boys were buried, Kathleen found an email written by Chada 18 months earlier which pointed to a sinister plot.
She revealed: “In it he indicated that he, I, Eoghan and Ruairi were all going to be dead. So in other words, he had planned a murder-suicide.”
The Case I Can’t Forget is on RTE One on Monday at 9.35pm.
READ NEXT:
Nadine Lott's killer attacked in jail and 'would be killed' if out of line again
David Haye appears to confirm Una Healy 'throuple' romance as he breaks silence
Doctor, 30, dies in 'freak' drowning accident after car reverses into Mayo river
Driver tests positive for drugs then bites garda's finger off in horror incident
RTE Tommy Tiernan Show viewers praise 'inspirational' guest who refuses to be 'victim'
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter
