Bengaluru: Nine years after a man was murdered in his Yeshwantpur residence, a city court sentenced his wife and her lover to life imprisonment.Satish, 34, a resident of KN Block under the Yeshwanthpur police station limits, was found dead under suspicious circumstances on May 22, 2017. His wife, Kalpana (32, at the time of the offence), who was a housekeeping staff member at a hospital, had developed an illicit relationship with her colleague, Jaweed Pasha, 22.Police said Kalpana, a mother of two children, eloped with Jaweed on April 18, 2017, prompting Satish to file a missing complaint with the Yeshwanthpur police. During this period, the two accused conspired to eliminate Satish, believing that he was an obstacle to their relationship. After the families intervened, Kalpana returned to her husband.Investigators found that the two accused had remained in constant contact on the phone and had allegedly planned the murder in advance. According to the prosecution, Jaweed procured sleeping pills from a medical store through an acquaintance. On the night of May 22, 2017, Kalpana allegedly mixed the tablets into Satish’s pumpkin curry. After he fell asleep, Jaweed entered the house and the two allegedly strangled Satish using a pair of churidar pants. When he resisted, Jaweed is said to have stuffed a cloth into his mouth and struck him with a stone, ensuring his death.To cover up the crime, Kalpana allegedly told family members that Satish had consumed poison and shifted him to a hospital, where he was declared dead. However, police grew suspicious and insisted on a postmortem examination.Police found that Kalpana had destroyed the sim card she had used to communicate with Jaweed and disposed of it near the hospital where she worked. The postmortem report revealed ligature marks on Satish’s neck and confirmed that he had suffered blunt-force injuries before his death, corroborating the prosecution’s case.After a trial before the CCH-67 court in Bengaluru, judge A Jayaprakash, on July 6, 2026, held both the accused guilty of murder. The court sentenced them to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each. In default of payment of the fine, they will have to undergo one year of rigorous imprisonment.“The case was entirely based on circumstantial evidence. The only eyewitness was one of Kalpana’s children, but the child turned hostile during the trial. However, the chain of circumstantial evidence, including the forensic reports and the testimony of the medical store owner, played a crucial role in securing the conviction,” public prosecutor KV Ashwathanarayan said.
