Last year, a 25-year-old native of Kollam died after being bitten twice by a cobra. And to solve the mystery of whether it could be a murder, the Kerala Police reconstructed a scientific test with a dummy to solve the case.
Now, a video of the experiment released by the police force has gone viral online.
The victim, identified as Uthra was recovering at her parents’ house, from a previous viper bite, she was bitten once again by a cobra, which ultimately resulted in her death.
Turns out the victim had been bitten by the snake in May 2020, when she was asleep beside her husband and their one-and-a-half-year-old son.
The police began a probe after Uthra’s family doubted Sooraj, the husband’s intentions and his weird statement in which he said that the snake had slithered in through a window which they had left open but police suspected him as the couple were in an air-conditioned room that night.
In the experiment video, conducted at the State Training Institute of the Forest Department,, shows the snake moving into the corner of the room without biting the dummy. A piece of chicken was even tied to the hand of the dummy to probe whether the snakebite was induced and not natural.
Later in the video, the snake handler is seen grabbing the reptile by its neck and forcing it to bite the dummy.
According to the Mathrubhumi News, “The snake was made to bite on the meat and the depth of the wound was determined. The difference between a wound caused by a natural snakebite and the wound caused when the snake is made to bite the victim could be understood through this process.”
Uthra was bitten by a 150 cm long cobra snake and had two wounds around 2.5 cm and 2.8 cm deep. However, in the experiment conducted by the department, the wound caused by the snakebite in any natural situation was approximately 1.7 cm.
The investigator found a 2.4 cm deep wound when the reptile was forced to bite the chicken piece tied onto the hand of the dummy. Only provocation led to a deeper injury, the news channel reported.