Bombay HC reduces jail term of girl who killed abusive brother

Raju Gedam was a police constable who died owing to multiple injuries from stabbing. His killer was sentenced to 10-year imprisonment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The Bombay high court, however, took a lenient view towards his killer, for she was his 26-year-old sister.

Sharda Gedam was convicted and sentenced to 10-year rigorous imprisonment by a trial court.

The court had handed out the maximum sentence under section 304 Part I (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) even though it spared Sharda the charge of murder.

Arrested in April 2009, Sharda spent 14 months in jail before her appeal, filed from the Akola central prison, was heard by the Nagpur bench of the high court. Sharda’s counsel told the court that Sharda’s attack on her brother Raju was out of “grave and sudden provocation”.

According to the FIR lodged by the police on April 30, 2009, Raju’s body was found in the courtyard of his house under a guava tree. It was soaked in blood. The court’s order stated that Raju had come home drunk and abused his mother, Sharda, and the other sister, Vinita. He flung the plate of food given to him and lifted a wooden plank and threw it on his mother. The court was told that Raju always ill-treated the women in his family.

Raju’s post-mortem report indicated that he had several injuries on his chest, neck, arms, wrist, back and ribs. The defence also argued that this could not be one person’s doing and Sharda alone could not have inflicted so many injuries. The court, however, said the prosecution had not investigated if any other persons were involved in the attack.

Sharda’s mother and sister, who witnessed the incident, both turned hostile to the prosecution in the trial court and supported her case. The high court inferred, that although the circumstances were not enough to prove sudden provocation in this case, the FIR also brought out the ill-treatment meted out to Sharda and her family.

“Considering the age of the accused and that she is a woman and, undoubtedly, she was led to a peculiar set of mind to retaliate the behaviour of the deceased, this court is satisfied with the submission that the gravity of her act undoubtedly is toned down and the circumstances do mitigate the need of softer sentence,” justice AH Joshi observed.

Holding that the sentence already undergone by Sharda was sufficient punishment, the court ordered her release from the prison.