A cobra, and a krait: Two brothers use snakes to kill father in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: What was thought to be an accidental snake bite death has now turned to be a cold-blooded murder of a lab assistant at a government school in Tiruvallur district. The diabolical murder plot was hatched by his two sons to claim insurance payouts of Rs 3 crore.

The brothers -- Mohanraj and Hariharan -- with the help of four other people brought a venomous krait snake to their house in Podathurpet town on October 22, 2025 and made it bite their father after an earlier attempt to kill him using a cobra failed.

On December 19, police arrested Mohanraj, Hariharan and their accomplices Balaji, Prasanth, Dinakaran, and Naveen Kumar, for the murder.

Krait snakes are among the most venomous in Asia, with highly potent neurotoxic venom that primarily causes paralysis by blocking nerve signals to muscles.

E P Ganesan, who worked at the 75-year-old Government Boys’ Higher Secondary School in Podathurpet in Tiruvallur district, died on October 22 allegedly due to a snake bite. His son Mohanraj filed a complaint with the Podathurpet police seeking registration of a case under Section 194 of BNSS to claim the insurance money.

Ganesan, who had suffered serious injuries in an accident six months ago, is believed to have told his sons that they will get insurance proceedings of Rs 3 crore even if he dies. His children decided to get rid of him for the money and are believed to have paid Rs 1.5 lakh to their accomplices.

Police initially treated the case as a snake bite until an insurance company filed a complaint with Inspector General of Police (North Zone) Asra Garg, raising suspicion about the claims made by Mohanraj and Hariharan. The suspicion arose because the family had subscribed to several high-value insurance policies disproportionate to its known income sources, besides availing multiple loans from various lenders.

When the case seemed far more than a simple snake bite, Garg formed an eight-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Gummidipoondi DSP C Jaishree to uncover the truth. The SIT's probe uncovered that his own sons had hatched the plot and orchestrated the murder for the insurance money.

Once they resolved to kill their father, Mohanraj and Hariharan hired four accomplices from Tiruvallur and Ranipet districts to execute the plan.

“Their plan was to stage a snake bite at their house in Podathurpet to look accidental. But there were several doubts as to how a poisonous snake made its way into their house in a densely populated locality and how it reached the room where Ganesan was sleeping,” a senior police officer told DH.

The officer explained that the brothers had engaged accomplices from far away to avoid suspicion. As planned, they first arranged a cobra through Dinakaran, which bit Ganesan’s leg before Deepavali, but it failed.

On October 22, the brothers and their accomplices procured a krait and had it bite Ganesan on the neck. “After the bite, Balaji and Prasanth killed the snake inside the house to convince people it was accidental and to prevent further exposure risks,” the officer added.

Police also noted an inordinate delay in rushing Ganesan to the hospital after the bite, which led them to suspect the family’s role. The SIT used scientific, technical, and field-level methods to expose the true nature of the crime, originally projected as an accidental snake bite death.