Hypocrisy, a fit of rage and poisoned chocolate - the horrific triple murder which shocked Kettering's community

Anju Asok and her children Jeeva and Janvi Saju had their whole lives ahead of them.

They had moved to the UK from India with hopes and dreams only to see them taken away in the most evil circumstances by someone they loved.

Saju Chelavalel, the children’s father and Anju’s husband, squeezed the life out of his wife in a fit of rage which was recorded in a harrowing audio clip. He wrongly believed she had been having an affair.

The monster then tried to kill his son and daughter with a toxic mix of chocolate and sleeping tablets – planning to take his own life – before callously strangling them when his attempts failed.

On Monday (July 3) he was jailed for life with a minimum of 40 years behind bars before he can be considered for release. At the age of 52, it means he is likely to die in prison.

Sentencing, The Honourable Mr Justice Pepperall told him: “A good family man does not kill his wife. Even then, if there was any remaining shred of decency about you, you would have recognised that your children could still have been brought up by relatives or other loving adults.

"Yet fuelled by alcohol, wallowing in self-pity and engulfed in your resentment at your wife’s perceived infidelity, you instead chose to snuff out their young and precious lives."

Northampton Crown Court heard police made the horrific discovery at their Petherton Court flat on the cold and frosty morning of December 15.

Anju, a 35-year-old nurse at Kettering General Hospital, had spoken to a colleague the night before and had agreed to be picked up at 6am for her shift. But that morning there was no answer and she did not turn up for work. It was unusual – Anju found the job demanding but never complained and barely missed a shift on the Barnwell B ward having joined the hospital in 2021.

Prosecutor James Newton-Price KC said Chelavalel lied to one of Anju’s colleagues that she had already called in sick. Another neighbour went to the flat and pressed the buzzer, spotting Chelavalel pacing anxiously and stumbling as if he had been drinking. Jeeva, six, and Janvi, four, had not turned up at nearby Kettering Park Infant Academy, the school they joined in 2022, and concerns grew before a 999 call was made.

Police arrived and smashed a glass door to gain entry where they found Chelavalel sitting in a corner, near an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, holding a knife to his own throat. He was told to drop the blade but instead begged officers to kill him.

Mr Newton-Price said: “He said words to the effect of ‘I am going to kill myself. You shoot me. You shoot me. I want to die. You shoot me’.”

Police then Tasered him and he dropped to the floor in shock before being arrested.

When asked what had happened he replied: "I killed my wife."

Anju’s body was found in a bedroom with the bodies of Jeeva and Janvi next to each other in a bed in another room. He had strangled Anju at about 10pm on December 14, before strangling the children several hours later with a dressing gown cord. All three were treated by paramedics and police in an attempt to revive them but it was too late.

A distressing audio recording was played in court from what prosecutors believed was the moment Anju was strangled, with the sound of a woman screaming, gasping and coughing while children cried in another room. The court heard the recording – which started with loud music – may have originally been of a child singing and was left on.

Chelavalel, who wore a grey prison issue tracksuit in the dock, had his head in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably as the clip was played.

Mr Justice Pepperall told him: "While you were squeezing the life out of your wife, your young children can be heard crying in the background for their mummy."

The court heard Chelavalel, who communicated through a Malayalam interpreter, penned a letter about the incident after killing his wife but before killing his children.

In it he claimed that Anju had been unfaithful to him, something which no evidence was found of when police looked at her phone. The same could not be said for hypocrite Chelavalel – who had been on dating websites while Anju was at work.

Mr Justice Pepperall told Chelavalel: "You were later to be insistent that the police should investigate that matter in the apparent belief that, if true, her infidelity might have justified or at least explained your appalling crimes...even if you had been right in your suspicions, let me make clear that nothing could possibly justify violence let alone the brutal murders of your family."

The court heard the letter said he ‘got fed up’ and asked Anju to go back to India but lost control when she scolded his mother. Planning to kill himself and his children, he left detailed instructions for their corpses to be sent to Kerala in India, where they were from, cremated and placed together in a pit.

His letter added: "Convey my best regards in Kettering. Let's see somewhere else in hell or heaven."

The audio clip also captured the sound of a blender as Chelavalel made a poisoned chocolate mix with sugar, water and crushed up sleeping tablets which he wanted to use to kill the children. They did not like it and didn’t drink it leading to their father later strangling them, although the court heard he could not remember it happening.

There was no evidence of him having any acute symptoms of a mental illness.

Mr Newton-Price said that, when interviewed by police, Chelavalel said he had lost all control and held Anju’s neck but claimed he intended to shock her, not kill her.

When asked if he had then decided to kill the children so they could all be together, he said: "Yeah, yeah."

An impact statement read out by Anju’s colleague, Manoj Mathew, said Anju’s sister is so devastated she has still not recovered from the shock and was hospitalised for a week.

Mr Mathew said: “The life of Anju’s parents and siblings back in India will never be the same without her.”

The court also heard Chelavalel had been trying to contact Anju’s family from prison.

A statement from the head of Kettering Park Infant Academy, Sarah Powell, was also read out in court. She said she now has four-year-olds asking, if a child moves away, if it's because they have died like Jeeva and Janvi.

She added that one member of teaching staff is now leaving education and the incident has been a contributing factor in her decision.

Mitigating, George Carter-Stephenson KC claimed Chelavalel was someone who was devoted to his children and his family.

He said: "Whatever sentence this court imposes on him today, he has to live for the rest of his life with the knowledge of what he did on that particular night."

He added that Chelavalel genuinely believed Anju was being unfaithful and that ‘something snapped’.

Mr Carter-Stephenson said the killing of Anju was spontaneous and that Chelavalel’s alcohol-clouded thought process led him to believe that there would be nobody to take care of the children when he took his own life, which the court heard was why he killed them.

He said: "He tried to deal with it in a way which simply caused them to go to sleep and not wake up. It's the not best mitigation but it's some distance from what he ultimately did which was strangle them."

In a letter Chelavalel said he loved his children and said the incident wouldn’t have happened had he been sober.

Mr Newton-Price said a whole-life order could be made – a rare sentence which currently applies to just over 60 living prisoners in the UK.

But Mr Justice Pepperall ruled that it would not be appropriate because he was not sure that Chelavalel had planned to murder his family before he exploded into violence, instead imposing a minimum term.

Chelavalel was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years behind bars before he can be considered for parole.

Mr Justice Pepperall told him: “It may well be that you are never released from custody.”