Boy was a fifth grader at school in Texas.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A 38 year-old mother in Texas ‘confessed’ to killing her 10-year-old son and keeping his body in a bathtub for a couple of days, but her lawyer is now contesting that confession and saying it’s “fiction”.
Pallavi Dhawan is facing charges of first-degree murder as investigators continue to try and piece together the events and motivations that led to the death of her son, Arnav. Police were notified of potential trouble involving the boy when his father, Sumeet Dhawan, returned home from a three-week business trip and received emails that his son had been truant from school and other activities for several days.
Sumeet called police when he was unable to find his son and wife, the latter of whom was out of the house when he returned home to Frisco, near Dallas, from the trip on January 30. Arnav was a fifth grader at the local Isbell Elementary School, and was involved in various extracurricular activities. He was supposed to be at a tutoring session when Sumeet came home, so he was not immediately alarmed at finding the house empty when he returned. But when his wife and son failed to come home at the time they normally did, he notified the authorities.
When Pallavi returned around 6:30 PM, police were already at the house. She said that she wanted to speak with her husband in private, and the two had a conversation the police did not hear. Sumeet then became visibly upset, and directed police to an upstairs bedroom, at which point they found the boy’s body in the adjacent bathroom, wrapped in cloth and plastic bags.
Police then asked Pallavi whether or not she was responsible for killing the boy, to which she allegedly nodded “yes.” That admission of guilt is being contested by her attorney, David Finn, who says it’s a fiction, and that she and her family were very happy – they even went on a recent trip to Disneyland, and neighbors have told investigators that the couple was nice but relatively introverted.
Autopsy work has revealed there was no fluid found in the boy’s lungs to indicate drowning, nor was any evidence of blunt force trauma found. Pallavi has allegedly told her attorney that the boy had a debilitating medical condition which ultimately claimed his life. The condition is microcephaly, a neuro-developmental disorder, and the boy allegedly also had a cyst that caused him to become a special-needs child.
For now, husband Sumeet is standing by his wife, telling investigators he has no reason to believe Pallavi would intentionally harm the boy, let alone kill him. But there is still no answer to the question of why his wife never called police when the boy died if she didn’t kill him; in fact, coroners have said that the boy was lying in the bathtub for around two days before he was discovered.
Pallavi is currently out of jail, on bond.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com