High concentrations of Sodium Pentothal (Thiopental sodium) and Succinylcholine .
The High Court convicted Dr. Sujatha Kumar. He was sentenced to .
“A healthy 28-year-old woman doesn’t die in her sleep from a headache,” he thundered, forcing the magistrate to order a second, more detailed chemical analysis.
was the prodigy. A man of towering intellect and icy calm. After a glittering medical career in the UK, he returned to India with an accent thicker than clotted cream and a reputation as a genius. He married Neeraj in a grand affair—the intellectual meeting the romantic. INDIA-S BIGGEST SCANDAL Mysore Mallige
But the drama was far from over. Sujatha appealed to the Supreme Court of India. For eight more years, the case hung in limbo. Medical journals across the world debated the case. Was it murder or a rare allergic reaction?
At 2:15 AM on December 8, a frantic phone call shattered the silence of the police control room.
“At 11:30 PM,” he told the police, “Neeraj complained of a severe headache. She had a history of migraines. I, as a doctor, administered an injection of —a mild sedative and anti-emetic. She fell asleep peacefully. I went to the hall to watch television. At 2:00 AM, I returned to find her... unresponsive.” He was sentenced to
Then, in 2013, a stunning development.
But behind the mahogany doors, the marriage was a laboratory of resentment. Neeraj was liberal, outspoken, and hated the suffocating patriarchy of small-town elite society. Sujatha was obsessive, controlling, and, as the servants later whispered, pathologically jealous.
Then, in 2001, the Sessions Court delivered its verdict: A man of towering intellect and icy calm
The courtroom erupted. Neeraj’s mother fainted. Major General Sinha stood up, his medals clinking, and said to the judge: “You have not acquitted a doctor. You have licensed a murderer.” The verdict was so perverse that the Karnataka High Court took the unprecedented step of admitting an appeal without waiting for the state to file it.
But Neeraj’s family, the Kumars from Delhi, were not ordinary people. Her brother, , was a man who had commanded troops in battle. He smelled a cover-up.
In 2005, the High Court looked at the same evidence and saw the opposite. “The conduct of the accused,” the bench noted, “is inconsistent with that of a grieving husband. He did not raise an alarm. He did not call a neighbor. He called the police directly and confessed. Then, he retracted. The chemical analysis is unassailable.”