Life term for ‘killer’ mom by Supreme Court

In a first-ever judgment, the Supreme Court (SC) has given the life sentence to a tribal woman on the basis of circumstantial evidence, without looking for a motive. Usually, a sentence based on circumstantial evidence is backed with a motive.

There was no eyewitness when the woman, Satni Bai, killed her four-year-old child in Chattisgarh in 2006. Her relatives, who were also her neighbours, came out when they heard the boy’s cries. They saw Satni wearing blood-stained clothes and holding a blood-stained axe.

When the matter went to court, neither the trial court nor the high court looked for the motive behind a mother killing her child. They relied on the testimony of witnesses and justified the evidence by a 16-year old witness, who had turned hostile.

Then Satni moved the SC, but didn’t get a lawyer. The court urged Kiran Bhardwaj to appear for her. Many law experts believe that in a case built on circumstantial evidence, motive is crucial. “I think this is a first-of-its-kind judgment,’’ said an expert.

Bhardwaj had argued that Satni had been implicated because she is poor and illiterate. A mother cannot kill her child, the counsel said. But, a bench of justices P Satahsivam and HL Dattu upheld the sentence. However, they paid a tribute to motherhood,

“No mother can tolerate even a scratch on the body of her child,’’ the court observed, recalling Washington Irving’s words “a father may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives, and wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures...”

The judges defined Satni as a “wicked mother’’. She told the court she hadn’t killed her child but couldn’t explain why she had been implicated. She has condemned herself, the court said.