Rediff.com« Back to articlePrint this article

NRI accused in US church shootout arrested

November 25, 2008 16:06 IST

An Indian on the run after allegedly gunning down his estranged wife and another person in a New Jersey church has been arrested after a nationwide alert.

Joseph 'Sanish' Pallipurath was arrested around late Monday night in Monroe, east of Atlanta, after New Jersey police had sounded a country wide alert for him, the district US Marshal James Plousis said.

27 year-old Pallipurath had drove across US on Sunday from California to New Jersey, to persuade his wife Reshma James, 24, to return to him and then shot her when she spurned him.

He was on run after the shooting in which another man Dennis John Mallosseril,23, who maintained the church's web site, was also killed when he attempted to intervene between the couple, eyewitnesses said.

A third person, James' cousin, Silvy Perincheril,47, who was shot in the head remains in critical condition. The couple had an arranged marriage just a year ago and James had suffered abuse right from the initial days of her marriage in Kerala, which continued in New York, the police had said.

Recently, James had left her husband and moved in with a relative in New Jersey. She had also taken out a restraining order against Pallipurath, prosecutors said.

Pallipurath allegedly shot and killed Reshma James inside the St Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church in Clifton, New Jersey.

As the news of the shoot out spread, in California the suspects father Mathai Pallipurath had issued a plea to him to surrender.

© Copyright 2024 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.