Odisha lecturer gets life imprisonment for killing two by sending parcel bomb as wedding gift

    Bhubaneswar, May 28 (PTI) A college lecturer was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Odisha's Bolangir district on Wednesday for killing two persons, including a groom, by sending a parcel bomb as a wedding gift.
    Punjilal Meher, a lecturer at Jyoti Vikas College in Bhainsa, had a professional enmity with the groom's mother. She was the principal of the college.
    Punjilal, was the principal in charge of the college for a few days before the groom's mother Sanjukta Sahoo joined there as the new principal.
    Due to this reason, Punjilal hatched the conspiracy to kill her son Soumya and sent the bomb as a wedding gift in 2018, the police said.
    Additional District and Sessions Court, Patnagarh, judge Sonali Pattnaik, after examining 62 witnesses, 100 documentary evidence and 51 material objects, has convicted the accused Punjilal Meher (56) and sentenced him to life imprisonment, government counsel Chittaranjan Kanungo said.
    The court convicted him under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 201 (destroy evidence of a crime) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, he said.
    The court sentenced life imprisonment under two sections, 10 years of imprisonment under two charges and seven years imprisonment under another charge. Kanungo said that all the sentences would run concurrently.
    "Our submission was to treat it as a rarest of rare cases. However, the court did not observe it as a rarest of rare cases because all heinous crime cases cannot be treated like that," the public prosecutor said.
    He said the quantum of punishment pronounced by the court is very encouraging. It will give a positive message to the society at large.
    The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1.40 lakh on the convict. He will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, Kanungo informed media persons outside the court.
    Arun Bothra, a senior police officer, who led the crime branch investigation into the case in 2018, said, "When we took over the case, there was no evidence, no eyewitness, nothing to lead the investigation. There was no suspicion on Punjilal Meher."
    The crime branch got clues from the anonymous letter sent to the Bolangir SP (by Punjilal), Bothra said, adding that this was the first case in the country where a parcel bomb case accused had been convicted.
    "As per my knowledge, this is the first case where a parcel bomb blast case accused is convicted. It was completely a blind case and the Odisha Crime Branch cracked it," Bothra told PTI.
    "We collected crucial evidence like the cover of the letter, soft copy of the letter, the printer used to print it, and adhesive used to seal the letter from Punjilal Meher's possession. All were scientifically matched and proved," Bothra told media persons.
    Later, the accused narrated the entire episode and also demonstrated the bomb-making procedure before the police, he said, adding that Punjilal admitted to having learnt the process of parcel bomb-making from videos on the internet.
"I feel satisfied after the accused was convicted by the court and justice has been served to the victim’s family," Bothra, who is now serving as the ADG of Police, Railways and Coastal Security, said.
    According to the investigating agency, the parcel bomb gift was sent to the Sahoo family at Patnagarh from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, about 230 km away from Bolangir.
    Punjilal had sent the parcel in a different name like SK Sharma/Sinha from a courier agency at Raipur. It did not have a CCTV facility and he did this to avoid getting caught, the police said adding that he very cleverly operated leaving no scope of suspicion on him.
    "We have suffered an irreparable loss. We were praying for the death sentence. Still, we are satisfied with the judgment of the court," the deceased groom’s father, Rabindra Sahoo, said.
    Sanjukta Sahoo, the victim’s mother too expressed satisfaction with the court ruling while comparing Punjilal with a demon.
    Software engineer Soumya Sekhar Sahoo, who was 26 years old in 2018, and his 85-year-old grandmother Jemamani Sahoo were killed in the blast.
    His wife Rimarani, who was 22 years old in 2018, suffered critical injuries when a parcel bomb, disguised as a wedding gift, exploded at their Patnagarh home in Bolangir district on February 23, 2018.
    The blast took place a day after the newly married couple's wedding reception and when the groom opened the gift.
    Following a request by the new bride and her family, the then chief minister Naveen Patnaik had ordered the Crime Branch to probe into the incident.
    The crime branch took over the investigation on March 23, 2018, and arrested Meher in April 2018. He is currently lodged in the Patnagarh sub-jail.
    The crime branch, in its charge sheet, had accused Punjilal Meher an English lecturer at the college where the victim Soumya Sekhar’s mother Sanjukta Sahoo was the principal. He has been convicted under sections of IPC for murder, attempt to murder and Explosive Substance Act.
    The investigating agency had said that revenge was the motive behind the crime.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)