Solving Crime: How results of businessman’s medical test led Mumbai police to arrest his wife in murder case

The metal test conducted on Shah had revealed that the value of arsenic and thallium in his body was 425.76 and 362.34, respectively. The normal value of arsenic is 0.4 to 11.9, and that of thallium is 0.15 to 0.63. The police also found out that while no other members of Shah’s family showed traces of thallium or arsenic, the poisonous substances were present in the body of Shah’s wife Kavita, but at lesser values.

What the police found amiss was that while all other family members had undergone tests immediately on the recommendation of the doctors, Kavita had initially refused to do so. Instead, she only agreed to the test after eight days.

According to the police, they then began probing the source of the poisoning and found that Kavita allegedly cooked the food eaten by her husband and mother-in-law. The eight-day delay, the police alleged, was a bid to buy time as Kavita used it to eat food where she put small traces of the two poisonous substances to make it seem like she too was a victim.

According to the police, Kavita’s call data records and other evidence showed that she was in a relationship with a man named Hitesh Jain. Kavita and Hitesh had entered into a conspiracy to murder Shah murder by poisoning his food, the police said. Shah and Kavita had reportedly been estranged but began residing together again in May 2022. The police claimed that Kavita would cook for her husband and add thallium and arsenic to his food in small quantities. They also alleged that Jain had ordered the thallium.

Kavita and Jain were arrested on December 1, 2022.

In her bail arguments, Kavita said she was being falsely implicated. She said that she had taken good care of her husband, including taking him to the hospital and getting him admitted herself. She also claimed that the food in the house was made by cooks and was consumed by all family members, including her husband.

In May, a sessions court rejected Kavita’s bail plea considering the post-mortem report that said that the final cause of Shah’s death was thallium and arsenic poisoning. It considered her alleged refusal to immediately undergo the test when doctors recommended it for the whole family and then going through with it eight days later. Jain’s bail plea is currently pending. The trial in the case is yet to begin.