Kerala woman, lover get 20 yrs for poisoning, killing husband in Australia

Thiruvananthapuram: A Malayali woman and her lover have been sentenced to over 20 years in prison for murdering her husband in 2015.

While Sofia Sam (33) will serve a prison term of 22 years, her lover – Arun Kamalasannan – has been jailed for 27 years.

The Victorian Supreme Court had found both of them guilty of fatally poisoning the victim – Sam Abraham – with cyanide-laced orange juice in February.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, Justice Coghlan, while delivering the verdict said the guilty parties do not deserve any sympathy because the murder was a premeditated one.

Sam Abraham was found dead in his home in Epping in Melbourne on October 13, 2015. Though it was thought that he died of cardiac arrest, an autopsy report revealed that he was poisoned with cyanide.

Kamalasannan had sedated the family, including Sofia Sam and her child who was six-years-old at the time, on the day of the murder. He then forced Abraham to drink an orange juice laced with cyanide, reports said.

Sofia and her lover were arrested in August 2016, ten months after Sam’s murder.

Sam’s parents in Kollam welcomed the verdict. “We are really grateful to God that the guilty have been punished,” said Mathew Abraham, his father, Hindustan Times report further said.