Tense new bodycam footage shows the moment a drunk dad who strangled his wife in her own home before going on to kill his two young children holds a knife to his throat before being Tasered by police officers.
Saju Chelavalel sobbed in the dock on Monday and bowed his head as a court heard he had also made an audio recording which prosecutors allege captured the sounds of coughing and retching as he strangled NHS nurse Anju Asok.
The 52-year-old pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to Ms Asok’s murder and that of their six-year-old son Jeeva Saju and daughter Janvi Saju, aged four.
Video footage released by Northants Police shows officers breaking through glass doors into his home, where he is seen sitting holding a knife to his throat as they urge him to put the weapon down.
He is then Tasered by police.
Today, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the three murders.
Chelavalel, originally from Kerala in India, claims he lost control while drunk in the mistaken belief that his wife was having an affair, killing her at around 10pm on December 14 at their ground-floor flat in Petherton Court, Kettering.
The sentencing hearing was told today how Chelavalel had more than four hours “to reflect on whether to kill his children” before using a dressing gown cord to strangle them in the early hours of the following morning.
Opening the facts of the case, prosecutor James Newton-Price KC said the audio 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.
Part of the audio recording made by Chelavalel was played to the court, with Mr Newton-Price telling Mr Justice Pepperall: “The word ‘mummy’ can be heard and the defendant whispering.”
He said of coughing sounds heard on the recording: “We suspect that that may be the moment of strangulation (of Ms Asok) but we can’t say that with absolute certainty.”
Mr Newton-Price said Chelavalel urged police to shoot him at his home, where he also left instructions for his own and his family’s bodies to be cremated in India.
The prosecutor told the court that the killer was arrested after a 999 call at 11.12am on December 15, after a neighbour saw him apparently unable to speak.
After officers smashed a window to gain access to the property, Mr Newton-Price said, Chelavalel was seen to be holding a knife to his own throat.
The barrister told the court: “He responded (to the officers) with words to the effect of: ‘I am going to kill myself’. He said: ‘You shoot me, you shoot me’.”
Chelavalel was tasered and handcuffed and police went into a bedroom, where they found the body of 35-year-old Ms Asok, who worked as a nurse at Kettering General Hospital.
The children’s bodies were then found next to each other on a double bed in a different room.
A letter written by Chelavalel in English was found at the scene, in which he made unsupported accusations about his wife being unfaithful and claimed to have cryptocurrency investments and £5,000 in other funds.
The letter stated: “Please use this amount to transfer our corpses to India.”
The court heard that no evidence whatsoever of any affair was found on Ms Asok’s phone, but that searches for women on dating sites were made by Chelavalel on December 3 and 12.
During police interviews, Chelavalel claimed he could not remember killing his children, but said he had lost control of himself when his wife made an offensive comment about his mother.
Offering mitigation, defence KC George Carter-Stephenson said the circumstances of the case were tragic in the extreme for relatives of the victims.
He said of Chelavalel: “They are also tragic for this particular defendant. Whatever sentence the court imposes on him today he has to live with the knowledge of what he did on that particular night.”
Addressing Chelavalel’s claims that his wife was unfaithful to him, Mr Carter-Stephenson said: “Although there is no evidence of it, it is something that he had believed.
“That belief was obviously wrong. But he continues to hold that view.”
Chelavalel’s possession of a knife during his arrest was part of his intent to end his own life, the defence KC argued.
The audio recording was made because it “was simply left on” from a period when the children were heard singing, Mr Carter-Stephenson added.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the family said: “The life of Anju’s parents and siblings back in India will never be the same without her.
"She came to this country with a lot of expectations and dreams. She was not expecting a tragic death from her husband, whom she trusted.
“Her only surviving sister and the aunt of Jeeva and Janvi is so traumatised that she hasn’t recovered from this incident’s mental shock and deep scars.
"Indeed, she was hospitalised for a week in India due to the shock of what happened.”
He also went on to explain how Chelavalel had caused "deep upset" by trying to contact Anju’s family from prison.
