A judge on Friday gave her OK to exhume the body of an Illinois lottery winner who was poisoned last July.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office made the request and got the approval without objections. The body of 46-year-old Urooj Khan will be exhumed at Rosehill Cemetery on Chicago’s North Side.
Khan’s sudden death was initially attributed to natural causes, but a relative phoned the Medical Examiner’s office and asked investigators to take another look. When his investigators took a second look at the toxicology samples, they found lethal levels of cyanide.
The next step, they said, is to exhume Khan’s body.
Family members told NBC Chicago on Friday they're happy with the judge's decision and want justice. They said they want the truth to come out.
"He cannot die like that, absolutely not," said Khan's brother, Imtiaz Khan. "He's such a healthy person."
"We are confident 100 percent he did not die the natural way, somebody did something," Imtiaz Khan said.
Khan bought a winning scratch-off ticket last year at Goreel’s convenience store on North Western Avenue.
The state cut him a check for his winnings -- $424,449.60 after taxes -- but Khan never saw the money. He grew ill the next evening and was pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital.
At the North Side cleaners where Urooj Khan built a piece of the American dream, his widow, Shabana Ansari, said this week that even now she still doesn’t believe anyone could have poisoned her husband.
"He was an extremely great person," Ansari said. "Nobody could be his enemies."
Ansari admitted that police questioned her about the ingredients of Khan’s last meal, served July 20 of last year.