Patna: Man, sister sentenced to 10-year rigorous imprisonment for dowry killing

PATNA: The district and sessions court of Patna on Friday awarded ten years’ rigorous imprisonment to a man for killing his wife for dowry almost ten years back at Jhunjhun Mahal locality under Gardanibagh police station area in the Bihar capital.
Along with Amit Kumar, the court of district judge Rudra Prakash Mishra also awarded the same punishment to his younger unmarried sister Bhawna Kumari for conniving in the murder of her sister-in-law Shambhavi Kumari alias Tanu.
The court also directed Amit to shell out Rs 2 lakh of which Rs 1 lakh would be made a fixed deposit in the name of couple’s minor daughter who is presently aged around 12 years and was mere two and half years old at the time of the incident while the rest amount would be used to meet the daily and educational expenses of the girl who now lives with her maternal grandparents. Amit was aged around 34 years, Bhawna was 24 and Shambhavi was 23 years old at the time of murder.
The court awarded compensation to the minor daughter of the couple by invoking Section 357 (3) of CrPC after public prosecutor Vijay Kumar Sinha argued that Amit must pay the amount so that it assists his daughter’s maternal grandparents to take care of her education and other expenses. Sinha was assisted by additional public prosecutor Nasimuddin in the case while counsel Sudhir Kumar Sinha defended brother-sister duo.
Shambhavi, who was a year junior to Bhawna in her college, had a love marriage with Amit on September 28, 2005. She was charred to death at her husband’s private residence after midnight on October 6, 2009. While Amit and Bhawna lived with their parents at their residence, Shambhavi’s parents lived in a flat hardly few paces away in the same locality. Amit’s parents were in Kanpur on day of murder.
Prosecution counsels, with the help of the deceased’s post-mortem report and deposition of eight witnessed, were successful in establishing during the course of trial that Amit, along with his sister, first strangulated Shambhavi to death.
Later the duo carried her body inside the bathroom and burned it by pouring kerosene with a motive to erase evidences. Police, in the course of investigation, had found an empty bottle inside house. Amit and Bhawna had not received any burn injuries which established that they had not attempted to save Shambhavi.
Shambhavi’s father Ashok Kumar Srivastava, who had lodged FIR making Amit and Bhawna as named accused for dowry death, had alleged that Amit was demanding Rs 1.3 lakh from them after he observed that they had expended more on marriage of Shambhavi’s younger sister in 2008. Since then, Amit had started physically and mentally torture his wife in several ways, finally resulted in her murder.
Police had filed chargesheet in case on December 21, 2009 but charges were finally framed by court in 2013. Only one prosecution witness was examined till 2014 while in three each were examined in next two successive years.