Mumbai, May 14 (PTI) A court here has convicted a man for killing his female friend based on the “last seen together theory” and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The court said the circumstances lead to the “inevitable conclusion” that the man had an “adverse motive in mind” against the victim as he did not like her certain acts, like wearing a jeans T-shirt and talking to others.
The man was convicted under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for murder by an additional sessions judge on Tuesday.
As per the prosecution, Vinod Kumar and the victim Sandhya Harijan had checked into a hotel in Mumbai on October 5, 2019.
The hotel manager, who is the complainant in the case, said the duo went out and returned to their room at 2 pm.
While Sandhya was found dead in the hotel room the next morning, Kumar was not there, police said. Police said she was strangled to death.
The court, in a detailed order available on Wednesday, said that since the case was based on circumstantial evidence, the motive behind the murder needed to be established, besides the last seen together theory.
The order stated that testimony of the victim’s friends and relatives showed that “the accused was having an affair with Sandhya”.
Kumar, however, used to harass the victim. He was suspicious about her and not allowing her to talk to anyone, said the order, citing the witnesses’ statement.
The court said that Sandhya’s family had tried to persuade her to leave Kumar. However, Sandhya was quite determined to marry him.
“The testimonies have revealed that the accused was bearing a grudge against Sandhya's certain acts like wearing a jeans T-shirt, talking to others, etc,” the court noted.
The court said the statements of Sandhya’s close relatives and friends revealed that Kumar intended to harm her because of his suspicion, possessiveness, and similar feelings towards her.
“Thus, according to the theory of last seen together, circumstances lead to the inevitable conclusion that the accused, having an already adverse motive against Sandhya in his mind, has committed her murder by strangulating her by means of a piece of rope,” the court said.
Ruling that it was not a rarest of rare case, the court handed Kumar life imprisonment instead of capital punishment.