New Delhi: A Delhi court has sentenced a woman along with her son to life imprisonment for killing her 60-year-old husband, dismissing their contention that he had committed suicide.
Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja held Beena Stella Rafi and her son Mohammad Bilal guilty of murdering Mohammad Rafi by strangulating him last February and slapped a fine of Rs 7,000 on each of them.
The court convicted the mother-son duo dismissing their contention that Rafi had committed suicide and was found hanging from a window outside their house in Daryaganj.
"In light of the above discussion, what emerges from the evidence on record is that the medical evidence clearly points to the fact that death of Mohammad Rafi was homicidal and not suicidal.”
"The claim of accused (Beena and Bilal) that the deceased was found hanging from a `jangla` (window) and he committed suicide is thus totally contrary to the medical evidence on record," the court said.
According to police, they received information last February that Rafi was admitted in an unconscious state by Bilal in a hospital here and doctors declared him brought dead.
During the probe, Bilal told police that on the day of the incident, his father was under the influence of liquor and quarrelled with his mother. He added that he threw away a liquor bottle after he reached home.
Bilal told the investigators that thereafter he left the house only to find him in an unconscious state when he returned. During the trial, Bilal also said that Rafi had come home in an inebriated state and after Beena had scolded him, he became irritated and hit himself on his head with a pressure cooker`s lid and then left the house.
Police, however, had told the court that Beena and Bilal were fed up with Rafi`s drinking habit and they had both murdered him after strangulating him with a cable wire.
The prosecutor also argued that during the investigation, the cable wire and the lid of pressure cooker were recovered from the house of the accused.
The court, after considering the evidence and the medical records, observed that it was a case based on "circumstantial evidence" and both the accused "have failed to discharge their onus by explaining the manner in which Mohammad Rafi expired".
"The evidence on record in the present case unerringly establishes that this was a case of homicidal death by ligature strangulation which is totally inconsistent with the claim of the accused that the death of the deceased was suicidal. The weapon of offence i.e. cable wire was recovered from inside the house of the accused," it said.
PTI
