India-s Biggest Scandal Mysore Mallige -
He suspected her of having an affair with a fellow professor. She accused him of being impotent and cruel. The paradise was a prison. The official version from Dr. Sujatha Kumar was precise, clinical—too clinical.
The Supreme Court, in a final, scathing 2016 judgment, upheld the conviction. “The circumstantial evidence is complete. The motive is clear. The doctor abused his knowledge to become a death angel. The ‘Mysore Mallige’ case shall serve as the precedent for medical murder in India.” Dr. Sujatha Kumar sits in Bangalore Central Prison today, still maintaining his innocence, still writing letters to medical journals about judicial bias.
But Neeraj’s family, the Kumars from Delhi, were not ordinary people. Her brother, , was a man who had commanded troops in battle. He smelled a cover-up.
was the prodigy. A man of towering intellect and icy calm. After a glittering medical career in the UK, he returned to India with an accent thicker than clotted cream and a reputation as a genius. He married Neeraj in a grand affair—the intellectual meeting the romantic. INDIA-S BIGGEST SCANDAL Mysore Mallige
He claimed she must have had a pulmonary embolism or a sudden cardiac arrest. A tragedy of medicine.
A junior doctor from the same hospital came forward with an old, yellowed logbook. It showed that , Dr. Sujatha Kumar had signed out 500 mg of Thiopental and 200 mg of Succinylcholine. The logbook had been “missing” for twenty years.
By 1992, they were the power couple of Mysore’s elite. He worked at the prestigious JSS Hospital. She taught at a local women’s college. They hosted parties where the wine flowed and the conversation was sharper than scalpels. He suspected her of having an affair with a fellow professor
“A healthy 28-year-old woman doesn’t die in her sleep from a headache,” he thundered, forcing the magistrate to order a second, more detailed chemical analysis.
“At 11:30 PM,” he told the police, “Neeraj complained of a severe headache. She had a history of migraines. I, as a doctor, administered an injection of —a mild sedative and anti-emetic. She fell asleep peacefully. I went to the hall to watch television. At 2:00 AM, I returned to find her... unresponsive.”
They produced Dr. B. Umadathan, a forensic legend. He demonstrated in court: A healthy person does not vomit pink froth unless their lungs have been flooded by a paralytic agent. The three injection marks prove panic—the first dose didn't kill her fast enough, so he injected more. The official version from Dr
The police assumed it was a drunken brawl. But when Inspector Shankar reached the sprawling house, he found a scene that did not fit any template. A young, beautiful woman—Neeraj Kumari—lay on a crumpled bed, her silk nightie twisted, her limbs cold. Beside her knelt Dr. Sujatha Kumar, a respected cardiac anesthesiologist, trembling.
For seven years, the case meandered. Judges were transferred. Witnesses turned hostile. Servants who saw Sujatha pacing outside the bedroom at 1:00 AM suddenly “forgot.”
In 2005, the High Court looked at the same evidence and saw the opposite. “The conduct of the accused,” the bench noted, “is inconsistent with that of a grieving husband. He did not raise an alarm. He did not call a neighbor. He called the police directly and confessed. Then, he retracted. The chemical analysis is unassailable.”
