Kerala police yet to find motive for family’s killing

The Kerala police are yet to establish the motive behind a young man killing his parents, sister and aunt despite grilling the murder suspect for days on end with the help of psychologists and psychiatrists.The suspect, Cadell Jeanson Raja, 30, has been constantly changing his reasons for committing the mass murder. While earlier he claimed to have committed the crime after being neglected by the family, Raja now insists he was taking revenge on his father for his “perversions.” The man claims his father, a retired professor, was an alcoholic who used to engage in sleaze talk with women after getting drunk.Raja made the new “revelations” after he was taken to his house at in the posh Nanthancode area in the Kerala capital yesterday.Raja claimed he killed his mother, a doctor, because she did not oppose his father’s behaviour, and his sister and visually impaired aunt because he did not want them to be orphaned.Raja, who appeared smiling before the television cameras, revealed he first planned to kill his family on April 2 but could not bring himself carry out the plan. He then watched videos of gory murders on the Internet and gained courage to carry out the gruesome act. Raja claimed he also “practised” killing dummies.Immediately after the police arrested him from the railway station, they called in the experts as he appeared mentally unstable and was talking about “an experiment to detach human souls from their bodies”.Police had earlier said Raja, who suffers from bipolar disorder, seemed unrepentant over the murders. He did not hesitate in confessing to the crime stating the entire episode was part of an experiment and he had ‘freed’ his relatives.Retired cardiologist Dr Jean Padma, 58, her husband Professor Raj Thankam, 60, their daughter Caroline, 25, and relative Lalitha Jain, 70, were killed by Raja using a sharp weapon he bought from an online store. Raja later burnt the bodies with petrol in the premises of the fortified house. Caroline had come home on vacation from China, where she was studying medicine. According to police Raja had tried to burn the victims’ bodies. Neighbours called the police after they saw smoke billowing from the house, situated just 500 metres from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s residence, on Sunday morning. When the police entered the premises they found the half-burnt and badly mutilated bodies.While three bodies were charred, another had been chopped up and kept in a bag at the multi-storeyed house. Police claim Raja killed the victims on Friday and later cleaned up the crime scene. He stayed at the house with the bodies until Sunday after telling neighbours that his family had gone on a trip.