‘My father-in-law tried to kill me with a meat cleaver’

A father said he was convinced he was going to die after his father-in-law hit him in the back of the head with a meat cleaver while he was eating his dinner.

After a two-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, Chacko Abraham Thenakarayil, 71, was found guilty of attempted murder.

The attack took place in front of the victim’s three-year-old daughter, who was also sitting at the dining table.

“I just felt a blow to my head,” the victim said. “It felt like when you crack a coconut, and you hear that (sound).”

The victim, who lives in Chelmsford but wishes to remain anonymous, believes Thenakarayil attacked him because of control issues.

He claimed that his father-in-law was angry because he and Thenakarayil’s daughter refused to pay for his air ticket back to India.

But despite the ordeal of the past year, the victim said he still called Thenakarayil “daddy.”

The incident took place on the evening of the king’s coronation, May 6.

The victim, an engineer, had planned a quiet evening while his wife went shopping, but it ended with him fearing for his life.

He was sitting next to his daughter eating dinner at around 8pm (BST) when he was punched from behind by Thenakarayil.

“I turned around and saw him. He was holding a meat cleaver,” he told BBC Essex.

“It was a very heavy knife. I knew he hit me on the head and that’s all I can remember.

“I asked him ‘why did you do this to me?’ and he said all sorts of things, but I couldn’t understand anything. I was just shocked. I grabbed the knife.”

The victim said the only thing going through his mind at the time was, “I could die.”

He called his wife and said, “You have to call an ambulance, Dad hit me with a knife.”

After he ended the call, Thenakarayil tried to stab him again with a knife.

The victim managed to disarm his father-in-law and threw the two knives into the garden. Thenakarayil responded by pulling out a third.

“When I saw him again, he was holding a heavy knife again and it looked like he was determined to kill me,” he added.

The victim said that neighbors came by and managed to pull Thenakarayil outside.

When his wife returned from shopping, she said the front of her house was filled with emergency workers and that her husband had lost a lot of blood.

While the victim was being treated, Thenakarayil calmly entered the house.

“He went to his room as if nothing had happened and sat there watching television,” the victim said.

“A cop came and took him outside. After he was arrested, he was screaming, ‘I’m not done yet.'”

Thenakarayil lived alone in India before the couple invited him to move to the UK and live with them in 2019.

In Indian culture, it is customary for parents to continue living with their adult children into old age.

His daughter said she even took out a loan to care for her father, who had struggled with health problems all his life.

But the victim said Thenakarayil’s manipulative nature created a negative energy in the house.

He sent voice messages to his family in India claiming he was being tortured and deprived of food, the couple said.

Judge Chris Morgan said in sentencing that he was “satisfied” that Thenakarayil was being “well” cared for.

The victim believed that Thenakarayil thought it would be easier to control his daughter if he were out of the picture.

“Maybe he wanted to go back (to India), but he wanted to do it with ‘honour’ because he knew he couldn’t stay here any longer,” he said.

“Maybe he just wanted to finish me off and have my wife take care of him for the rest of his life – once I’m out of the picture.”

The victim had met his wife on an Indian matrimonial website when they were both living in the UK and they were engaged.

Initially, their parents agreed to the marriage, but Thenakarayil later wanted to call it off as he had found a ‘better’ man.

The victim’s wife told BBC Essex: “He said to all the family, ‘If you dare marry that boy I will chop your head off and write on the record that you are no longer my daughter’.”

She said Thenakarayil had that reaction because he knew he could control his daughter.

When she returned to England in 2007, she married her husband against her father’s wishes.

The attack took place 17 years after their marriage.

After her father was convicted, she said: “I certainly don’t think it was a joke when my father said he was going to chop my head off, because my father is a very unforgivable person.

“I saw his anger and I am sure he would have killed me.

“He would have said that you have brought shame on the family by not listening to me and that would be the end of the matter.”

After he was arrested, she confronted her father and asked him if he was “satisfied with what he had done.”

She added: “He said ‘no, I’m not happy yet… he’s not dead yet’.”

Thenakarayil was sentenced to eight years in prison at Chelmsford Crown Court on Wednesday.