On September 3, 2005, Smita George, 25, newly married and in a foreign land, disappeared without a trace. But she allegedly left a note at the Dubai flat from where she disappeared, saying she was on her way to meet her boyfriend. A decade later, in February 2015, with no trace of Smita, the Kerala Police arrested her husband, Valiyaparambil Antony, for allegedly forging the letter and torturing Smita and her disappearance.
Now, nearly a decade later, comes another twist: Last month, a court in Kochi acquitted Antony of both charges against him.
The CBI court also took note of the UAE’s letter – sent in July this year in response to the CBI’s letter rogatory – which said that on September 6, 2006, an unidentified body of a woman was found in a Sharjah hospital mortuary. A year after Smita’s disappearance. The letter from the UAE showed Smita’s family a photo of the body and said they had “100 percent confirmation” that it was hers. The letter also said that a forensic examination carried out on the body – which was buried on November 22, 2006 – confirmed that the man had died of “natural” causes.
“This report clears the mystery of why the missing victim did not die on September 3, 2005,” the Kochi Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court said while acquitting Antony, who was out on bail after serving 80 days in jail.
Kerala police arrested her husband Valiyaparambil Antony on the charge of forging the letter.
But questions remained. Where was Smita when she allegedly went missing on September 3, 2005 and until September 6, 2006 in a mortuary in Sharjah, 30 km from Dubai? If the body was really hers, how did she die? Was there another person in Antony and Smita’s marriage?
The body is in the mortuary
Nineteen years ago, on September 1, 2005, Smita flew to Dubai on a 55-day visa to join her husband Antony, who works in a marine engineering firm in Dubai. On September 5, Antony reported to the Indian Consulate in Dubai that his wife had gone missing two days earlier, on September 3. He also claimed to have found the letter in which he allegedly left her for her lover. He also sent a copy of the letter to Smita’s family in Kochi, Kerala, police said. The consulate alerted the Dubai Police, who took over the investigation and interrogated Antony, but it turned up no leads.
On September 8, 2005, days after Smitha’s alleged disappearance, Smitha’s father Alaskodath George, who worked in an engineering workshop, approached the Kochi police to investigate his daughter’s disappearance. Months later, in 2006, the High Court directed the Indian consulate to file a complaint with the Dubai Police and sought an action report. The consulate told the court that despite repeated attempts, the Dubai police could not find Smita.
In 2008, the High Court directed the consulate to publish Smita’s picture and description in local dailies in Dubai to trace her. But the court did not accept George’s demand to try the case against Antony in India. George raised doubts about his son-in-law’s behavior after the disappearance of his daughter.
While the search for Smita continued in the UAE and her family in Kochi was waiting for news of her daughter’s disappearance, Antony came to Kerala and divorced Smita for having an extramarital affair. Later, he remarried and moved to America to work as a marine engineering builder.
After no progress in the disappearance case in the UAE, Smita’s father George approached the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in 2011, who directed the Crime Branch to investigate the matter. The crime branch concluded that the letter was fake during the forensic examination of ‘Smita’s letter’. A case of forgery was registered against Antony and in February 2015, the crime branch arrested him for forgery – after which the police successfully brought him back from the US before he was arrested.
By then a decade had passed since Smita had gone missing.
Soon after Antony’s arrest, the Dubai Police reopened Smita’s case. Then they stumbled upon an important lead: the body of an unidentified woman had been admitted to a mortuary in the UAE city of Sharjah. As part of their investigation, UAE officials collected blood samples from Smita’s family members through UAE-based lawyer Shamsudin Karunagappalli, to see if DNA matched the body. “The family members were shown a photograph of the body at the mortuary, which they identified as Smita’s,” recalls Shamsudin. Smita’s mother Fancy and sister Sajni were taken to the UAE, where they were shown photographs of the body.
In Kerala in 2016, the CBI took over a fraud case from the crime branch following a High Court order.
In 2019, the CBI filed a chargesheet against Antony in a Kochi court and the UAE kept the investigation open pending its letter of objection. It is this response, from “the central authority of the UAE represented by its Ministry of Justice”, that paved the way for Antony’s acquittal.
The court relied on the results of the brain mapping and voice analysis tests that Antony was subjected to. On the brain mapping test, the court said the CBI “received an opinion that the accused had no information related to the disappearance of the victim”. The court also cited the expert opinion obtained by the CBI on the leveled voice analysis test that “there is no possibility of Antony’s involvement in Smitha’s disappearance or the forging of letters allegedly written by her”.
Valiyaparambil Antony (file photo)
In the forgery case, the court said, “Experts are of different opinion. The chain of passing of the letter until it reaches the police is shrouded in mystery and this affects the credibility of the letter.”
According to the details of the case, Smita’s uncle Maxon submitted a “forged letter” to the investigating officer.
But the court has mentioned another name Devyani in the order acquitting Antony in the case. “Deceased Devyani alone can be known in the daylight hours of September 3, 2005.”
Who is Devayani?
Devyani, a housewife from Kerala, who had moved to Dubai, emerged as a key figure in the case after she was taken into custody in May 2015. He was produced before a magistrate at Mattancherry in Kochi, where his statement was recorded under Section 164. CrPC.
According to her statement, Devyani and Antony lived together for two years before getting married to Smita. Before Smita arrived in Dubai, in September 2005, Antony allegedly asked Devyani if she could temporarily share her residence with the couple until they found a new place.
In her statement, Devyani said Smita reached her flat on “Thursday” (probably September 1, 2005). On the third day (September 3, when Smita was reported missing), Devyani said, when she reached her flat in the evening after work, she found the couple in the room with Smita bleeding from her forehead. Devyani said in her statement that Antony, who was allegedly carrying a knife, allegedly threatened her. That night, she alleged, she saw two other people in the room with Antony. He alleged that he was “slapped and threatened”, after which they all rushed to the police station. The next day, when she returned to her flat, she said, she encountered Smita’s uncle Maxson, who was working in Dubai at the time and who had come to check on Smita. Maxson questioned Devyani’s role in Antony’s life, and they both had a falling out after spending a few months in prison.
According to the Kerala Police, Devyani was sent to India after he was released from prison in 2006. Back home in Kerala, police said, she converted to Christianity, took a new name and a new passport, and flew to Kuwait, allegedly as Annie Varghese. They said Devyani was forced to return home after staying illegally in Kuwait.
In 2013, Devyani once again went to Kuwait, where she worked at Mess. Police said that in 2015, after Antony’s arrest in Kerala in the letter forgery case brought the Smita case into the limelight of the Gulf media, an allegedly de-identified Devayani returned to Kerala, where she was detained by the crime branch. .
After the CBI took over the investigation in 2016, Devyani underwent a graded voice analysis test. On June 16, she was taken to Ahmedabad for a brain mapping test, when hours before she reached the train station, Devyani asked for permission to use the washroom and allegedly consumed pesticides. He was admitted to a hospital in Ahmedabad, where he died on 9 July.
With this, a major link in the case was severed.
The court noted in its judgment that Devyani’s layered voice analysis suggested “high probability of Devyani’s involvement in Smita’s disappearance”.
The family is waiting
Back at Edappally in Kochi, time stands still for the Alasakodath family. A decade after her disappearance, Smitha’s father George stubbornly refused to surrender his landline phone – the only number Smitha knew and hoped she would call from somewhere. In 2017, after an exhausting battle to find his daughter, George died, leaving behind his wife and eldest daughter.
Smita’s brother-in-law Ajay George said, “We are unaware of what happened to Smita. The court verdict has not given us any relief. If his body was found in the mortuary in 2006, why were we not informed about it for a decade?”
Advocate MJ Santosh, appearing for Antony in the CBI case, told The Indian Express, “Antony is innocent. All the tests on him – brain mapping, voice analysis, etc. – gave him a clean chit. Crime branch and CBI went after him without any evidence. CBI should not file final report against him before receiving report from Dubai (Reply to CBI’s letter of inquiry). Who will compensate for the damage to his career? He was working in America when he was arrested in 2015,’ he said, ‘but Smita’s disappearance and death remain a mystery.
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