A woman has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for battering her husband to death and cutting off his genitals in an act that it described as “having been committed in utter frustration.”
Additional sessions judge N K Kaushik convicted Guddi alias Lakshmi alias Manku on murder charges on circumstantial evidence and on the deposition of largely formal witnesses, comprising policemen and other officials, as the woman refused to defend herself.
“The evidences and circumstances taken together, destroy the innocence of the woman and clearly establishes her guilt as the perpetrator of the murder,” the court said.
“Under these circumstances, it is not far to see that the accused committed the murder of the deceased,” it said.
The order came on a case last year involving murder of 35-year-old Raju alias Rajender of Mauranipur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhanshi district, who was living here with his wife Manku in Palam Extension near Dwarka.
His body was found in his house, wrapped in a plastic mat and bearing multiple wounds caused by a ‘silwata’ (a kitchen implement to blend spices). His genitals too was found cut off with a sickle and there was no sign of his wife.
Manku was later arrested by police from her village in Datia district in Madhya Pradesh, where she had fled after committing the crime. At her behest, the police also recovered the ‘silwata’ and the sickle, besides her blood-stained clothes and other vital material of evidence.
The court, however, spared the woman of death sentence saying that it was “not a rarest of rare crime” and she was not involved in any crime earlier.
During the whole trial and investigation, the court was unable to find out the woman’s reason or intention for killing her husband.
“It appears that the murder in this case was caused in a moment of emotional disturbance prompted by the utter sense of frustration and disappointment in the mind of the convict, who belongs to the poor section of the society,” the judge said.
