Sweets and arsenic: Behind the ‘horse medicine’ plot that left 3 dead in Madhya Pradesh

The dead included a young mother and her grandfather, as well as a watchman who worked at the Public Health Engineering office near which the tea stall was located. Forensic evidence showed that arsenic levels in the sweets they consumed were 23,000 times the permissible limit.

Abandoned green bag

According to police, it was on the night of January 8 that a green bag containing vegetables, snacks, and a box of sweets was left at the gate of Junnardeo’s Public Health Engineering office, next to a tea stall.

“The location was deliberate — next to a tea stall operated by Mukesh Kachuria. Dashru Yaduvanshi, a watchman at the PHE office, found the bag the next morning and ate several pieces of sweets. He was admitted to Chhindwara District Hospital after falling violently ill and died during treatment on January 9,” said an investigator.

Unaware of these events, Santoshi Kachuria, the tea stall operator’s wife, took the remaining sweets home on January 10 and shared them with her daughters, Khushbu and Pooja, and father-in-law Sundarlal. All four were hospitalised. Sundarlal Kachuria died on January 13, followed by 22-year-old Khushbu the next day. Santoshi and Pooja survived, police said.

Police seized the remaining sweets, container, and green bag on January 10. Samples sent to the Food and Drugs Department returned on January 19, showing “arsenic content of 25,648 mg/kg against a standard limit of 1.1 mg/kg”. Viscera preserved from Sundarlal Kachuria’s body “also tested positive for arsenic”.

Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr Naresh Kumar confirmed that samples sent to Indore “revealed heavy metal contamination at life-threatening levels”.

Junnardeo police roped in the cyber cell, which began its probe.

“Intelligence revealed that arsenic is found in ‘Somal’, a medicine given in minute doses to horses for protection during the winter, but lethal to humans in larger quantities,” said a senior police officer.

The in-laws

During the probe into the deaths, investigators learned that Khushbu Kachuria had married Akhilesh, the son of Jhadu Kasar from Dhavrikala village in the Chand police station area. The couple had a four-month-old daughter. According to family members, Khushbu allegedly faced harassment at her in-laws’ home.

On December 3, 2025, her mother, Santoshi, brought Khushbu and her infant daughter back to Junnardeo. When Khushbu refused to return to her marital home, her father-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law “began making threatening phone calls to relatives, demanding she come back”.

After the deaths, Khushbu’s family expressed suspicion about her in-laws. Police then questioned her father-in-law, Jhadu Kasar (57), brother-in-law Shubham Kasar (24), and sister-in-law Shivani Kasar (22), all residents of Dhavrikala.

“They initially denied involvement, but technical evidence pointed to them. Under sustained interrogation, investigators determined that the three accused believed Khushbu was defaming them among relatives and villagers, making allegations of inappropriate conduct and physical abuse,” the officer said.

The investigation revealed that the trio allegedly “plotted to eliminate Khushbu and her family”.

On January 5, they allegedly travelled from Dhavrikala to Junnardeo with cloth masks covering their faces and surveilled the PHE office area, where Mukesh Kachuria set up his tea stall, police said.

On the night of January 8, they “mixed ‘somal’ medicine, containing arsenic, into sweets at their home, placed the poisoned items in a bag with vegetables and snacks to avoid suspicion, and rode a motorcycle to the location,” police alleged. Jhadu and Shubham “arrived after midnight and quietly left the bag at the gate near the tea stall”, the officer said.