Kottayam: Samuel Abraham, the father of Sam Abraham who was poisoned by his wife at their home in Melbourne in 2015, is a bitter man. “I am happy that the killers were served at least such a sentence. But this is not enough,” Abraham told Onmanorama. The Victorian Supreme Court had on June 20 handed down a 22-year life sentence to Sofia, Sam's wife. Her paramour and partner-in-crime Arun Kamalasanan was given a sentence of 27 years.
Abraham's sole focus now is to secure the custody of Sam's nine-year-old son who is now living with Sofia's elder sister and her husband in Melbourne. “It is not safe to keep him there with that family. How can you keep him with the family of the person who murdered his father,” Abraham asked. Sofia's parents, too, are in Melbourne. “He will soon be 10, and is already at an emotionally fragile age. It is only natural that he will develop anger and revulsion towards that family. What is the guarantee that these people will not then try to kill him, too,” he said.
Abraham has already got in touch with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj's office to facilitate the child's return. “A friend of mine is constantly in touch with the ministry,” Abraham said from his home in Karavalur in Kollam district. Kollam MP N K Premachandran, too, is doing all that he can.
Abraham talks with his grandchild, but not as frequently as he would like. “Once in a month we chat over video. But he will not speak much as he is surrounded by the other family. When I ask him whether he is happy, he says yes. But I am not sure,” Abraham said. He does not, does not want to, talk with Sofia's elder sister, who is a nurse. But, whenever he feels like wanting to know more about his grandson, he converses with her husband. “Till now, I have not asked that family anything about the death of my son,” he said.
Abraham but is convinced that Sofia's mother was aware of all that happened. “She knows everything, and now she is claiming that both her daughter and the other person (Arun Kamalasanan) had not done anything wrong, that this is a cooked up fake case,” Abraham said.
He admits that he had no clue about what was happening in Sam's and Sofia's life. But after Sam's death, he has collected some scraps of information from relatives with whom Sam was close. “Now I understand that they did not have a physical relationship for over a year, especially after the other person came to Australia,” Abraham said. It was Sofia who brought Arun to Australia. “My son had a good job in Oman and he wanted Sofia to be in Oman. But she was adamant and Sam eventually had to move to Australia,” Abraham said. He is not sure but feels that Sofia and Arun may have got close, long before she got hitched to Sam, when they studied together in a college in Kottayam. “I don't think even Sam had any inkling of this relationship. Even after marriage, when she went out with this fellow, Sam might not have taken it seriously thinking she was just spending time with a college friend,” Abraham said.
If he is finding it hard to shake off the bitterness, a sense of disbelief too has not fully left him. “We knew this girl right from childhood. Sam was the leader of the choir of our church (Bethel Marthoma Church, Karavalur), and she was also part of the choir. They were like childhood friends. She called me 'papa' and had always been loving and polite. In fact, she used to call us regularly till a few days before she was nailed,” Abraham said.
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