Noida: An additional sessions court has sentenced a man, his brother and his brother-in-law to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 75,000 each for murdering his wife 11 years ago. The court found that the woman was beaten to death and her body had been concealed inside a bed box.The woman’s brother, Islamuddin, filed a complaint at Dadri police station on July 16, 2015, alleging that the three men — Inam, his elder brother Bablu and their brother-in-law Azad — had killed his sister Varisha and hidden her body. He told the cops Varisha had been married to Inam for the past 15 years. They had four children and lived only 500m away from his house in Kidwai Nagar, Dadri. Inam used to accuse Varisha of infidelity and had assaulted her several times before.Around 1.30pm that day, one of his nieces, Mantasha, had come running to his house and told him that her father and uncles were assaulting Varisha. “We rushed to her house and found the bedroom in disarray. On suspicion, we opened the bed box and found her body stuffed there,” he mentioned in the complaint.A case was registered against the men under IPC Section 302 (punishment for murder) read with sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and 201 (concealment of evidence). They conducted an autopsy of the body and filed a chargesheet. The court framed charges on May 5 next year.The men denied the charges and sought a trial, following which the prosecution presented eight witnesses, including the 11-year-old daughter, Mantasha. She told the court that she had seen her mother being assaulted by the three men and she was found dead the same evening.“The chain of circumstances presented by the prosecution is strongly connected and, taking into consideration every human possibility, leads to the conclusion that the murder of Varisha must have been committed by the accused and not by anyone else. They must have hidden her body in the bed box to hide ‘murder’. Thus, the accused are liable to be convicted for the offence,” judge Somprabha Mishra said.While announcing the quantum of sentence, he cited the Supreme Court judgment in Santosh Kumar Satish Bhushan Bariyar v. State of Maharashtra (2009) and said life imprisonment is the rule and death penalty is the exception. “Considering the facts, circumstances of the case, the age of the accused and their family responsibilities, Inam, Bablu and Azad are sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000 each for the offence under section 302 read with Section 34 of the IPC and to five years of imprisonment with a fine of Rs 25,000 each under Section 201,” the court ruled. The sentences will run concurrently and be adjusted against the time already spent in jail.
