On the night Roy Thomas died, in September 2011, he collapsed in a ground-floor bathroom of the family home at Koodathayi, a village in the hills of Kozhikode district in northern Kerala. The door was locked from the inside. He was 40. A post-mortem found cyanide in his body, and the local police at Kodenchery closed the file as a suicide. Relatives were told he had taken his own life, and some neighbors were told his heart had failed.
Eight years later, on Saturday, October 5, 2019, police arrested his widow, Jollyamma Joseph, known as Jolly, then 47. By then the investigation had gathered six deaths in the same family between 2002 and 2016, and police said she had been present at every one. She was charged in all six. Seven years after her arrest, the first of those cases is still being tried before a special court in Kozhikode, and no court has yet decided whether she caused any of the deaths. This page follows what the police, the chargesheets and the courts have said, and separates what has been alleged from what has been tested.
According to a 2019 HuffPost India profile, Jolly was the fifth of six children of C.C. Joseph and Thresiamma, whose family had moved from Pala in Kottayam district to Kattappana in Idukki district in the 1950s. The family grew pepper on about two acres and ran two government ration shops. Her younger brother, Nobi, described her to HuffPost as caring and bright as a child, the one sibling nobody fought with, and also as extravagant. A neighbor of 50 years in Kattappana said she had wanted a better life than the one she grew up in.
Accounts of her education differ. HuffPost reported that she studied at a government school through Class 10, took a pre-degree course at the Muslim Educational Society college in Kattappana, completed a BCom at a private college in Pala, and enrolled in an MCom course but dropped out while telling her family she held a master's degree. The police chargesheet in the Annamma Thomas case, as summarized by Kerala Kaumudi, says she had studied only to the pre-degree level and had told her husband's family she had an MCom.
She met Roy Thomas, a son of the Ponnamattam family of Koodathayi, through his maternal uncle, Mathew Manjadiyil; The News Minute placed the meeting at a relative's house in 1997, and HuffPost at a house-warming at Mathew's home. Mathew, by HuffPost's account, opposed the match because Roy had no job. They married in 1997. They had two sons.
Roy's parents were both government servants. His father, Tom Thomas, was a retired officer of the state education department, described in reports as a retired assistant education officer. His mother, Annamma Thomas, was a retired schoolteacher, well known in Koodathayi, whom police later called the "power centre" of the household, according to The Week. She funded her son's business ventures, which The Week said included several in Mukkam and Thamarassery, none of them successful. Roy had a brother, Rojo, who settled in the United States, and a sister, Renji, who lived in Vaikom.
For about 14 years Jolly told people she taught at the National Institute of Technology Calicut, at Kozhikode. Reports differ on the details: some say she claimed to be a commerce lecturer, others a BTech graduate teaching engineering. The News Minute reported that she drove toward the campus each day and sometimes sat in the canteen. NIT officials said she had never been employed there and that she had used a forged identity card to enter the campus. The Week reported that she also ran a beauty parlor and a private educational institution. Neighbors in Koodathayi told HuffPost that she was sociable and gracious, a regular at weddings and public gatherings. A local panchayat member told Gulf News she had been "the perfect daughter-in-law."
Annamma Thomas, 57, collapsed at home on August 22, 2002, after eating mutton soup, and died before she reached a hospital. Months earlier she had collapsed after a meal of soup and been revived; a hospital visit at the time found no cause. Her death was taken to be a heart attack, and there was no post-mortem.
When the police filed their sixth and final chargesheet in February 2020, it concerned her death, the first in the series. According to Kerala Kaumudi's account of that 1,061-page document, with 79 documents and 129 listed witnesses, police allege that Jolly did not use cyanide in this case but a veterinary poison sold as "Dog Kill," which she mixed into the soup on August 21, 2002, the day before Annamma died. The chargesheet says she obtained a prescription from a doctor at the Kozhikode district veterinary hospital by saying a dog at home had to be put down, using a false name. The prosecution has called the prescription copy crucial evidence. The motive alleged is that Annamma had been pressing her to find work and complete a BEd, and that Jolly feared her false educational claims would be exposed; the second motive alleged is control of the house. Police said she had confessed to two attempts on Annamma.
Tom Thomas, 66, died on August 26, 2008. Early reports said he vomited and collapsed after eating mashed tapioca, at a time when Jolly was the only other person in the house; hospital records gave a heart attack. When the chargesheet in his case was filed in February 2020, Superintendent K.G. Simon of the Kozhikode Rural police said cyanide had been slipped into his medicines, and described the moment of death from witness accounts: "As he drew the cross he collapsed and died."
That chargesheet ran to 1,069 pages with 175 witnesses. It placed a forged will at the center of the case. The prosecution alleges that before Tom died, Jolly forged a will in his name leaving the ancestral house and 38 and three-quarter cents of land to her and Roy. Simon told reporters that Tom's signature on the will was a photocopy, and that the typewriter used to type the beneficiary's name had been found and given to the court. Police also cited two transfers of Rs 50,000 and an insurance policy. The News Minute reported the police view that Tom had fallen out with Jolly after selling property and giving money to his other children; Onmanorama reported that he had sold 2.5 acres of paddy land and given her the money, then refused further claims. The Week reported that his bank balance at death was only Rs 22,000, which police found unusual for a retired couple who had both drawn government salaries, and that a diary kept by Tom and Annamma had gone missing.
Roy's sister, Renji, told the Press Trust of India in October 2019 that Jolly had cared for Tom after Annamma's death, and that the family had seen her as a devoted daughter-in-law. "I used to consider Jolly as my elder sister," she said. "I used to like her."
Roy Thomas was 40. Most reports give his date of death as September 30, 2011; early reports in October 2019 gave September 9. He vomited and collapsed in the washroom after a meal, and was found behind a door locked from the inside. He died on the way to a hospital in Kozhikode city.
His was the only one of the six deaths followed by a post-mortem, and only because his uncle, Mathew Manjadiyil, insisted on one. It found cyanide. The Kodenchery police registered an unnatural death, concluded it was suicide, and never established where the poison had come from. After his death, Renji said, it was put about that he had been an alcoholic and had killed himself; she said he had died heartbroken over a troubled marriage. Police later alleged that the motive in his case lay in his drinking, the strain in the marriage, objections he raised to her friendships, and Jolly's wish to marry someone else.
The prosecution's account in the Roy Thomas case, as set out before the Kerala High Court, is that Jolly mixed poison into his dinner and his drinking water, then cleaned the vessels. In the High Court's summary of the case file, the post-mortem pointed to poisoning, not a heart attack; Jolly had told people his heart had failed. Simon said in October 2019: "We found that the Roy's death had occurred due to cyanide, while the wife had claimed he had died of cardiac arrest."
Mathew Manjadiyil, Annamma's brother, was 68 and a retired army man, according to The News Minute. He had pressed for the post-mortem on Roy and, after it, for a fuller inquiry. On February 24, 2014, he was found on the floor of his home after Jolly, who lived nearby, alerted neighbors. He died in hospital.
Police allege he was poisoned because he kept questioning Roy's death. Simon said she planned this death more carefully than any other, and police said she had confessed to giving him cyanide in coffee; another report said it was in his alcohol. The accounts were not reconciled in the sources consulted.
Alphine was the daughter of Shaju Zacharias (also reported as Shaju Skaria), a schoolteacher and a cousin of Roy's, and his wife, Sily. She was nearly two. On May 3, 2014, the family held a feast at their home in Kodenchery for the First Holy Communion of Alphine's older brother. According to police sources quoted by Onmanorama, Jolly went into the kitchen and gave cyanide-coated bread to Shaju's sister, who dipped it in chicken curry and fed it to the child. An eyewitness told police they saw Jolly handing food to Alphine in the kitchen. Alphine fell ill soon afterward and was taken to hospital, where she died. Shaju told police that he had seen Jolly outside in the festival tent and that she had not gone into the house.
Police say Jolly first claimed the child had choked on bread. A medical board later found that account inconsistent, since witnesses said Alphine cried after eating, which choking would have prevented. Police said Jolly at first confessed to other deaths but denied this one, and admitted it when questioned about the eyewitness statements. They also said she had planned to poison Sily at the same feast.
Reports differ on Alphine's age (one or two) and, in a few early accounts, on the year of her death. Most reports, including Onmanorama, The Week and The News Minute, give May 3, 2014.
Sily Shaju, also spelled Cily, was 44. On January 11, 2016, she collapsed at a dental clinic in Thamarassery, after a relative's wedding, while in Jolly's company. Witnesses described seizures and froth at the mouth after she drank water. The Hindustan Times reported that she died in Jolly's lap. According to Onmanorama's police sources, this was the third attempt on her life; cyanide, they said, had been given both in water and on tablets.
On February 6, 2017, about a year after Sily's death, Jolly married Shaju. Police allege the motive in Sily's case was her wish to marry him. Shaju was questioned several times in 2019. One early report said he had been made an accused; later reports said police found no evidence connecting him to the deaths, and he was released after questioning. He is not among the accused named in any later court report consulted.
The case turned on Rojo Thomas, Roy's brother in the United States. He and Renji had become suspicious after property documents surfaced that, they said, had been forged. Renji told PTI that for three years they did not drink anything in the house; the week before the arrest she had refused a glass of juice there. Police later said Renji had once fallen ill after an Ayurvedic tonic Jolly gave her, and recovered after drinking water.
Rojo used Right to Information requests to obtain the post-mortem report and property records, and he filed a civil suit alleging that Jolly had forged documents to take his father's property. His first police complaint about Roy's death was closed as suicide. He told The News Minute in October 2019 that Jolly had tried, through intermediaries, to make withdrawal of that complaint a clause in a mediated settlement of the civil case. "She forced me to drop the case," he said.
In mid-2019 he complained again, to the Kozhikode Rural Superintendent of Police. Reports give the month as July, August or September. A Special Branch sub-inspector, Jeevan George, made the preliminary inquiry. When officers reread the 2011 file and saw the cyanide finding, they sought court permission to reopen it. Over about three months, a team under Superintendent Simon worked through the other deaths in the family.
On Friday, October 4, 2019, police opened six graves in two parish cemeteries. At St Mary's Forane Church, Kodenchery, they exhumed Sily and Alphine first; at Lourdes Matha Church, Koodathayi, the other four. A friend of Jolly's, Johnson, later testified that when the Crime Branch decided to examine the graves she had asked relatives and friends for help removing the remains, and that on October 2 she told him that opening the graves would be a problem because the crime would be proven if the remains were examined.
She was arrested the next day, Saturday, October 5, at the Ponnamattam house. Two men were arrested with her: M.S. Mathew, 44, a relative and close friend who worked at a jewelry firm, and Prajikumar, 48, a goldsmith at the same firm. Police allege Prajikumar supplied cyanide to Mathew, who passed it to Jolly. Their accounts differed: Prajikumar said he supplied it once, Mathew said twice, and Mathew said Jolly first asked for it in 2008, saying she needed to kill a dog. Police believed it may have been supplied as early as 2002, although the chargesheet later attributed the 2002 death to the veterinary poison. A fourth man, K. Manoj Kumar, a local Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader later expelled from the party, was arrested and accused of helping prepare the forged will. The Thamarassery magistrate remanded the first three to custody for two weeks.
Police told reporters she had confessed. Accounts differed on whether that first confession covered six deaths or five. She refused lie-detector and narco-analysis tests. Simon said that she had read widely about cyanide before the poisonings, that she had used sodium cyanide, and that she had paid Rs 1,500 or more for it. He said police had first checked NIT Calicut's stock of the chemical and found nothing missing, which led them to Mathew and Prajikumar. He also said she had targeted two children in the extended family who showed similar symptoms and survived; those attempts have not been charged. "The deaths will stop because we have arrested Jolly now," Simon said. Pointing to the narrowing gaps between deaths, he said: "The gap between two deaths was six years, then it became three and then two and a half." The Week quoted him calling her "a brilliant criminal." Those were police statements at the time of arrest, not findings of any court.
Her father, Joseph, told reporters in Kattappana that he knew nothing of the allegations. "Let the police probe reveal everything," he said.
The state police chief, Loknath Behera, called it a challenging probe, citing the age of the deaths and the lack of eyewitnesses. On October 10, 2019, the special investigation team grew from 10 officers to 35, under the supervision of the North Zone Inspector General, Ashok Yadav, with an IT cell and the heads of several state forensic laboratories attached. Police asked laboratories abroad for help.
The forensic picture remained thin. Only Roy's case had a post-mortem at the time of death. In November 2019 a medical board at Kozhikode Medical College, made up of neurosurgeons, physicians and forensic surgeons, reviewed seized hospital records and witness descriptions of symptoms for the other five and gave what police called a positive indication of poisoning. Deputy Superintendent R. Haridas told The News Minute: "In the case of Roy Thomas, we were sure that he died because of cyanide poisoning."
The laboratory results were mixed. The Kozhikode Regional Chemical Laboratory examined five sets of remains in January 2020 and reported cyanide only in Sily's. The Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad examined the remains of Annamma, Tom, Mathew and Alphine and, according to a report later placed before the court, "failed to find any trace of cyanide or any other poison" in them. The prosecution attributed this to the years between burial and exhumation. Gulf News reported police statements that cyanide had also been found in a substance taken from the dashboard of her car and in a sample from the house.
Under Indian procedure an accused is entitled to bail if no chargesheet is filed within 90 days, and police chose to file first in Roy's case, the one with scientific proof, without waiting for the forensic reports. The Roy Thomas chargesheet was filed at the Thamarassery court on January 1, 2020. Madhyamam reported that it ran to more than 1,000 pages, with 242 witnesses and 322 documents; Gulf News gave 1,800 pages. It named Jolly as the first accused, Mathew and Prajikumar as having procured the cyanide, and Manoj Kumar for the forgery. A notary, C. Vijayakumar, who attested a photocopy of the will, was later added as the fifth accused; the Kerala High Court quashed the proceedings against him, saying his conduct was reprehensible but that he should not be tried alongside those charged with murder. Four further chargesheets followed, and the sixth, on Annamma's death, was filed on February 10, 2020. The Annamma chargesheet named Jolly as the sole accused and said a proper inquiry at the time of the earlier deaths could have prevented the later ones.
Jolly has been held in custody since her arrest, mostly at the Kozhikode district jail. Early in the morning of February 27, 2020, she cut her wrist in prison, according to officials using a tooth and the edge of a food plate; she was treated at Kozhikode Medical College Hospital.
In October 2020 Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan of the Kerala High Court granted her bail in the Annamma Thomas case, observing that it was for the trial court to decide whether to accept a confession she was said to have made to a witness 17 years after the death. He also criticized police for leaking details of the investigation and of confession statements to the press. She stayed in jail because of the other cases, and the state appealed. On February 8, 2021, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Mohan M. Shantanagoudar and Vineet Saran ordered: "Leave granted. There shall be stay of release from custody of the respondent." On March 1, 2021, Justice Ashok Menon refused bail in the Tom Thomas case, citing the risk to witnesses and her earlier self-harm, and directed the trial court to dispose of the case quickly. "The applicant is not entitled to any indulgence from this court," he wrote.
Preliminary hearings in the Roy and Sily cases began at the Kozhikode Principal Sessions Court in August 2020, with N.K. Unnikrishnan as special prosecutor. Jolly's defense was led by B.A. Aloor, a Kozhikode criminal lawyer, who argued that police had named her without any evidence beyond statements extracted under pressure, and told reporters that police were feeding stories to the press.
She asked to be discharged in the Roy Thomas case. The sessions court refused, and on March 6, 2023, Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas of the High Court declined to interfere. He found "sufficient materials to create a strong suspicion of the involvement of the revision petitioner." He noted the prosecution's reliance on statements by her son and her present husband describing a confession made to them, on the post-mortem finding, on cyanide recovered on the basis of her statement, and on the alleged relationship between the co-accused through which the cyanide was obtained. Whether the confession was trustworthy, and whether it needed corroboration, he left to the trial.
Charges in the Roy Thomas case were read in January 2023 before the special court in Kozhikode that handles the Koodathayi cases: murder, conspiracy and forgery against Jolly; conspiracy and abetment against Mathew and Prajikumar; and forgery-related charges against Manoj Kumar. Onmanorama reported that she "listened to the chargesheet unperturbed." Hearings in the other five cases were adjourned.
The trial in the Roy Thomas case began in 2023 before Judge S.R. Shyamlal at the special court in Kozhikode, formally the Additional District Court (Special Court for Trial of Marad Cases). After Jolly complained of media intrusion into her privacy, the trial court ordered the proceedings held in camera, closed to the press and the public. She later challenged the order, arguing that it shut out junior lawyers, law interns and reporters, and in March 2023 Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas of the High Court upheld it, finding the presiding judge "wholly justified."
Among the early witnesses was Johnson, the friend who described Jolly's request about the graves. He told the court in March 2023 that she had admitted poisoning Annamma and killing five people with cyanide, and that the cyanide had come from Mathew, whom he called Shaji. Mathew's lawyer disputed that Mathew was known by that name. The News Minute, citing Manorama, reported that her brothers, Babu and Tomy Joseph, also testified that she had confessed to them.
Other witnesses addressed her claimed career. In April 2023 the principal of her son's school, Father Jilson Joseph, testified that she had introduced herself at a parent-teacher meeting as an NIT teacher and listed that occupation on school forms; a member of the editorial board of the Koodathayi parish directory testified that she had supplied the family's entry, describing herself the same way. Her lawyer, Prashant, suggested in cross-examination that the witnesses were hostile to her because of a dispute with church authorities.
Not every witness supported the prosecution. In May 2023 P. Praveen Kumar, a former CPI(M) local secretary who had signed the record of a November 2019 evidence-collection visit with Manoj Kumar, turned hostile and gave evidence in favor of Jolly and Manoj Kumar.
The forensic surgeon who had performed Roy's post-mortem, Dr. R. Sonu, died before he could testify. In July 2025 a former forensic surgeon at Kozhikode Medical College, Dr. K. Prasannan, testified as the 123rd prosecution witness that Roy had died of cyanide ingestion, and that the post-mortem report and the chemical analysis reached the same conclusion.
The defense changed hands after B.A. Aloor died. In August 2025 the High Court, Justice V.G. Arun, refused Jolly's request to inspect the scene with her new lawyer, agreeing with the trial court's security concerns and the prosecution's argument that the house had changed a great deal since 2011. Onmanorama reported that 124 prosecution witnesses had been examined by then and described the trial as in its final stages.
In June 2026 the High Court, Justice C.S. Dias, allowed the prosecution to call a handwriting expert who was not on the original witness list, to prove the forensic laboratory's examination of the disputed will. The prosecution explained that the documents had been sent to the laboratory in December 2019, but that the chargesheet had to be filed within the statutory period, before the report came back. The defense said the move was a late attempt to fill gaps in the case. The court found "no question of filling up any lacunae because the documents are already on record," and said Jolly could cross-examine the expert. By then, LiveLaw reported, the prosecution had examined 132 witnesses and marked 285 exhibits.
As of the October 6, 2026 LiveLaw report, the trial in the Roy Thomas case was still in progress before the special court in Kozhikode, and LiveLaw described Jolly Joseph as an undertrial accused. No verdict had been given in any of the six cases. The trials in the other five cases, on Annamma, Tom, Mathew, Alphine and Sily, had not been reported as begun in the sources consulted. The cases against M.S. Mathew, Prajikumar and K. Manoj Kumar are being heard with hers. Every accusation described on this page remains unproven in court.
In December 2023 Netflix released a documentary on the case, Curry and Cyanide, which included interviews with relatives, the complainants and witnesses who were still giving evidence. Krishnan Rajendran, a senior forensic surgeon at the Government T.D. Medical College in Alappuzha, objected that the film presented her as guilty before any verdict and called it a "dangerous trend." "Let the accused in the case be convicted if found guilty or otherwise acquitted," he wrote.
In 2025 and 2026 Jolly took legal action against Anali, a Malayalam drama series for JioHotstar directed by Midhun Manuel Thomas that she said was based on her case. On December 18, 2025, Justice V.G. Arun of the High Court declined to stop its release, asking, "Cases are not decided based on cinemas, is it?" The High Court later dismissed her petition and told her to use the ordinary civil remedy. She then sued in Ernakulam, and on August 20, 2026, the Third Additional Munsiff court barred release of the series insofar as it identified her with its central female character, "creating an impression that the petitioner is the actual perpetrator." On October 5, 2026, the same court refused JioStar's application to lift that order.
Proven in a court: nothing about responsibility for the deaths. Courts have found only that there is enough material to frame charges and to keep her in custody, and the High Court in 2023 described "a strong suspicion," which is the standard for going to trial, not for conviction.
Established by evidence before the court: Roy Thomas's post-mortem found cyanide, and a prosecution forensic witness has testified to that. Witnesses have testified that she presented herself for years as an NIT teacher. Witnesses have testified that she confessed to them.
Alleged by police and prosecutors, not yet tested: that she poisoned all six people; that she used Dog Kill on Annamma and cyanide on the other five; that she forged Tom Thomas's will; that Mathew and Prajikumar procured the cyanide for her; the motives attributed to each death; and the uncharged attempts on two children and on Renji.
Disputed or weak: the laboratory results. Cyanide was reported in Sily's remains but not in those of Annamma, Tom, Mathew or Alphine, and the medical board's conclusion rests on records and witness accounts rather than chemistry. The confessions police announced in October 2019 were made in custody and reported through leaks that the High Court criticized; the confessions relied on at trial are extra-judicial statements to family and friends, whose weight is for the trial judge. One prosecution witness has turned hostile. Her defense has maintained that there is no evidence against her beyond pressured statements. Reported dates, ages and spellings also vary between sources, as listed in the notes.
1997: Jolly marries Roy Thomas of the Ponnamattam family, Koodathayi.
August 22, 2002: Annamma Thomas, 57, dies after a meal of mutton soup.
August 26, 2008: Tom Thomas, 66, collapses and dies.
September 30, 2011 (some reports: September 9): Roy Thomas, 40, dies; post-mortem finds cyanide; police close the case as suicide.
February 24, 2014: Mathew Manjadiyil, 68, dies.
May 3, 2014: Alphine Shaju, about 2, dies after her brother's First Communion feast.
January 11, 2016: Sily Shaju, 44, collapses at a dental clinic in Thamarassery and dies.
February 6, 2017: Jolly marries Shaju Zacharias.
2019: Rojo Thomas's complaint to the Kozhikode Rural police; the 2011 file is reopened.
October 4, 2019: Six graves opened at Kodenchery and Koodathayi.
October 5, 2019: Jolly Joseph, M.S. Mathew and Prajikumar arrested.
October 10, 2019: Investigation team expanded to 35 officers.
November 2019: Medical board reports indications of poisoning in all six deaths.
January 1, 2020: First chargesheet filed (Roy Thomas).
January 2020: Kozhikode laboratory reports cyanide in Sily's remains only.
February 10, 2020: Sixth chargesheet filed (Annamma Thomas).
February 27, 2020: Jolly injures herself in jail.
October 2020: High Court grants bail in the Annamma case; she stays in custody.
February 8, 2021: Supreme Court stays her release.
March 1, 2021: High Court refuses bail in the Tom Thomas case.
January 2023: Charges framed in the Roy Thomas case.
March 6, 2023: High Court upholds refusal to discharge her.
2023: Trial begins in Kozhikode; witnesses testify to confessions.
December 2023: Netflix releases Curry and Cyanide.
July 2025: Forensic witness testifies Roy died of cyanide.
August 11, 2025: 124 prosecution witnesses examined; scene-inspection request refused.
June 4, 2026: 132 prosecution witnesses examined; High Court allows a handwriting expert to be called.
October 5-6, 2026: Trial still in progress, as of the October 6, 2026 LiveLaw report; no verdict.