Prosecutors to seek death for father accused of burning children

A Glendale Heights father may face the death penalty if he is convicted of killing his two adoring sons after dousing the boys with gasoline and lighting them on fire.

Prosecutors filed motions today stating their intention to seek capital punishment for Kaushik J. Patel during his monthly DuPage County court hearing in Wheaton.

The 34-year-old man is charged with causing the fatal injuries Nov. 18 after luring his sons with new toy cars into a bathroom of their home on the 1800 block of Harvest Lane and setting them on fire, police said. The boys' mother, Nishaben, was not home when the fire broke out.

Afterward, Kaushik Patel buckled his children into the back seat of his car and drove them to his older brother's house about five miles away in Hanover Park. A relative called 911.

The boys weren't expected to survive that first night, but they fought for months inside Loyola Medical Center's burn unit in Maywood. The youngest child, Om, 4, was the first to die, on Jan. 17. Vishv, 7, survived several surgeries but took a sudden turn for the worse and died Feb. 19.

Their father also suffered severe burns. He has remained in the DuPage County jail on a $10 million cash bond since his Feb. 15 release from the hospital.

In a March 7 jailhouse interview, Patel told the Daily Herald it was an accident and that he meant to harm only himself.

"It wasn't murder," he said. "No one understands. I love my kids. I was not trying to kill them, only me."

Patel, who speaks limited English, said he was suicidal that day while struggling with family problems involving his mother-in-law, who came to live with the couple about three years earlier. He said the tension led to marital problems.

The couple wed in an arranged marriage in their native India in 1997, five years after he had immigrated to the United States.

Authorities aren't buying the accident story. They said both boys suffered much more severe burns than their father. And authorities said Patel made incriminating statements to his brother in which he admitted it was a botched murder-suicide attempt.

Though there is an unofficial moratorium on executions in Illinois, judges and juries across the state continue to mete out death sentences. There are 14 men on Illinois' death row.

DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett made the capital punishment decision after consulting with a special team of his prosecutors who review murder cases. Illinois law allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty, for example, if there's more than one victim, proof of premeditation and the murder is "heinous and exceptionally brutal."

The boys' mother also was consulted.

Those factors are supposed to be weighed against mitigating circumstances, such as if the defendant has a clean criminal past, a diminished mental capacity or a history of childhood abuse. It also is not uncommon for prosecutors to state their intentions to go for the death penalty to have leverage in plea-bargain negotiations.

Patel has pleaded innocent. His criminal history includes a drunken-driving arrest one year earlier.

DuPage Circuit Judge Kathryn Creswell is presiding over the high-profile case. A trial date has not been set.