Man gets life term for killing sister’s boyfriend

New Delhi: A Delhi court has awarded life imprisonment to a man for killing his neighbour suspecting him of having an affair with his sister, who went missing two weeks before the 2012 incident.

Additional Sessions Judge Anil Kumar held Delhi resident Surender, guilty of offences under section 302 (murder) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of IPC saying “the act shows the short temper and cruel nature of convict.”

The court, however, did not consider it as a rare of rare case and said it did not warrant death penalty. “All murders are gruesome and cruel. No doubt in the present case, the convict had committed the murder of deceased in a brutal and inhuman manner,as a result of which an innocent life was lost.

“Considering the totality of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances and in view of the case law, I am of the considered opinion that this case does not fall in the category of rarest of rare cases, which warrants death sentence,” the judge said.

As per police, UP native Surender entered the house of victim Sonu, who was his neghbour, and hit him on his face with a brick and a pan. The post-mortem report of the victim revealed 18 external injuries, including severe head injury which led to his death.

According to the prosecution, a complaint was lodged by the victim’s mother at Dabri Police Station in South West Delhi, alleging that on April 4, 2012, Surender entered the house and hit her son with a brick when he was sleeping.

She had said that the accused’s sister was missing for a few days and he had assumed that Sonu had ruined her life and came with a motive to kill him. She also said that when she tried to save her son, the accused hit her too with a brick.

During the trial, the accused had pleaded not guilty and claimed he was falsely implicated.

–PTI