NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has convicted a woman and her purported lover for murdering the woman’s husband. The court observed that an “illicit relationship was the biggest weapon of cheating that destroyed” a family.
Additional sessions judge Vinod Yadav also said, “Illicit relationships are a perfect mix for disaster. Most times, it turns the family system into hell.”
The woman, Shanti, and her brother-in-law (sister’s husband) Satender, were accused of killing her husband Dilip in 2015.
Holding that they were in an “illicit relationship”, the court said, “Deceased being found dead within the secured precincts of his house raises an irresistible inference that he was murdered by the accused persons in a pre-planned conspiracy.”
Dilip’s postmortem suggested the cause for his death to be asphyxiation. Police claimed that the wife was having an affair with Satender, who was living in their house at the time of Dilip’s death. The allegation was supported by the testimony of Dilip’s sister-in-law who claimed to have seen both accused in a “compromising position”.
Shanti’s arrest led to the seizure of certain household items, including rat kill. In her defense in court, her counsel argued that Dilip died after falling from the stairs as he was heavily drunk. Satender, on the other hand, argued it was Dilip’s sister-in-law who had framed him in the case for he had refused to partner with her in his business.
They both also said that seizures made by police had actually been planted on them.
Commenting on the nature of evidence brought on record, the court highlighted five such circumstances — most important one relating to the crime scene — to hold it was a murder. “The onus was on the persons residing in the house, i.e., Shanti and co-accused Satender to give a cogent explanation with regard to the sudden, unnatural and untimely death of Dilip, which admittedly they have failed to do,” it said.
To show why the murder charge couldn’t be proved against his client, the defense counsel submitted that some of the family members, who deposed as star witnesses in the case, had turned hostile. He said there was not even an iota of evidence or statement to prove an “illicit relationship” between the two accused persons.
Dealing with the submission, the court noted that the testimony of hostile witnesses couldn’t be rejected “en block” (all at the same time) and the court had to look at evidence of the hostile witnesses to corroborate other evidence on record.
The court relied on the testimony of Dilip’s sister-in-law saying it couldn’t be just discarded as the defense didn’t agree with it. “If such a sole testimony is found by the court to be entirely reliable, there is no legal impediment to the conviction of the accused persons on such proof,” it added.