Investigations

March 6, 2026

Scandal Mysore Mallige: India-s Biggest

Two years after the launch of the UK’s Invest in Women Taskforce, its flagship fund of funds is yet to deploy any capital


Amy Lewin

8 min read

The Bootstrap 4F team at the London Stock Exchange, April 2025

Scandal Mysore Mallige: India-s Biggest

Then, in 2001, the Sessions Court delivered its verdict:

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.

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.” INDIA-S BIGGEST SCANDAL Mysore Mallige

The High Court convicted Dr. Sujatha Kumar. He was sentenced to .

But behind the mahogany doors, the marriage was a laboratory of resentment. Neeraj was liberal, outspoken, and hated the suffocating patriarchy of small-town elite society. Sujatha was obsessive, controlling, and, as the servants later whispered, pathologically jealous.

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.” Then, in 2001, the Sessions Court delivered its

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.

He claimed she must have had a pulmonary embolism or a sudden cardiac arrest. A tragedy of medicine.

But the drama was far from over. Sujatha appealed to the Supreme Court of India. For eight more years, the case hung in limbo. Medical journals across the world debated the case. Was it murder or a rare allergic reaction? The logbook had been “missing” for twenty years

Then, in 2013, a stunning development.

The courtroom erupted. Neeraj’s mother fainted. Major General Sinha stood up, his medals clinking, and said to the judge: “You have not acquitted a doctor. You have licensed a murderer.” The verdict was so perverse that the Karnataka High Court took the unprecedented step of admitting an appeal without waiting for the state to file it.

“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.

Amy Lewin

Amy Lewin is Sifted’s editor and host of Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast . Follow her on X, LinkedIn and Bluesky

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