An additional sessions court in Kanpur on Saturday convicted a woman and her lover, sentencing them to life imprisonment for the murder of the woman's husband in September 2023. The presiding judge, Sapna Tripathi, also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each on the accused, Priyanka Pandey and Anas Hashmi, and ordered that they would undergo an additional three months of imprisonment if they fail to pay the fine.
The court observed that the period already spent in jail would be set off against the sentence. The order further stated that 50% of the fine from each accused would be given to the deceased's mother, Shakuntala.
However, before pronouncing the judgment, the court dropped charges under Sections 404 and 411 of the Indian Penal Code against the accused as the prosecution failed to prove them. Assistant district government counsel Pradeep Kumar Sahu sought the maximum sentence for the accused, arguing that the accused woman and her lover not only killed the man but also attempted to destroy evidence.
Case Background
The First Information Report in the case was registered on the complaint of the deceased's mother, Shakuntala, a resident of Galla Mandi in the Naubasta area. In her complaint, she stated that her son, Ravikant alias Nitin Pandey, worked in Gujarat while Priyanka lived in Kanpur.
On September 1, 2023, she said her son received a call from an individual and left home, saying he would return within an hour. However, his phone was later found switched off. On September 2, she lodged a missing report at Naubasta police station. On September 3, she received information that an unidentified male body was lying near Skomiya Academy in Naubasta. She went there and identified the body as that of Ravikant.
In her complaint, she alleged that her daughter-in-law and her lover had killed her son. During the investigation, police arrested Priyanka and Anas Hashmi and charged them with the murder of Ravikant.
