The police have all but confirmed on Wednesday that the charred body found alongside the burnt remains of Vaishna inside the insurance company at Pappanamcode junction in Thiruvananthapuram was that of her second husband Binu Kumar.
"All circumstantial evidences point to that conclusion. But for an official confirmation, we will have to wait for the DNA report from the Forensic Science Laboratory," a top source in the Nemom Police Station said. This will take nearly a month.
It was around 1.30 pm on September 3 that a serious blaze was noticed on the second-floor office of a New India Assurance Company franchise office. People were alerted to the fire by the loud explosions that came from the burning office. Two charred bodies were found inside the office after the Fire Force arrived and had put out the fire.
The bodies were fully scorched and blackened that it was hard to ascertain even the gender, forget identities, of the bodies. Initially, it was felt both were females. It was at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College that one was identified as Vaishna, the office employee. The other body was assumed to be that of a client who happened to visit the office at the time.
The police started to explore the murder angle when short circuit was ruled out by the officers of the Electrical Inspectorate. The IE officers who visited the site could not detect any wiring defect that could set off the fire.
The police then examined the CCTV visuals in the shops nearby. "From these visuals we saw a man arriving in an autorickshaw and then going up to the office," the source said. "His face, however, is not clear. The visuals do not show him return," the source added.
Since the Nemom police had some six months ago received a complaint that her second husband had barged into her office and had threatened to harm her, the police immediately tried to contact Binu. "His mobile was switched off. We could not find him nor his mobile at his house or in areas he usually frequented," the police source said. It also came to light that Vaishna was living separately from her second husband.
The presence of turpentine in Binu's house further solidified the suspicion. Painting work was going on at his house. "At the burn site, there was an intense smell of something highly flammable. We presume that Binu would have used turpentine to set fire to the office," the police source said.
According to the police, the CCTV visuals show that the last man who went up to the office had a cloth bag slung over his shoulders. "He must have kept the flammable material in this bag," the police source said.
A knife was also picked up from the site, but it did not throw up any blood stains. So, it is still not clear how the deaths happened. "Binu must have planned to stab his wife to death and then kill himself by setting the entire office on fire," the source said. It now seems that the stabbing had not taken place.
Binu Kumar was Vaishna's first husband's friend. Though she left her first husband for Binu, Vaishna's relationship with her second husband, too, strained after Binu had reportedly turned violent. Vaishna has two children - a boy (10) and a girl (9), and both are from her first marriage. She lived with her mother and two children at a house just a kilometre from Pappanamcode Junction where her office was.
