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Noose for rapist, murderer of sister-in-law in Pondy

Our correspondent in Pondicherry

Pondicherry chief judge EV Kumar has sentenced 27-year-old Kamal Shah to death by hanging, for the rape and murder of Parvathi Shah, wife of his elder brother Ravi.

The judge also sentenced Kamal to 10 years rigorous imprisonment for rape and two years RI for destroying evidence, both running concurrently, alongside the confirmation of a death sentence by the Madras high court, the appellate judicial authority for union territory matters.

"The ends of justice will be met if Kamal Shah is hanged by his neck until he is dead," Kumar said, breaking the nib of his pen on his court table, as is the custom in verdicts involving death sentences.

He sentenced Kamal's mother, Padmavathi to two years RI for destroying evidence and did not buy the prosecution case that she too was an abettor of the murder.

The case, in which Parvathi's lover-turned-husband Ravi too is an accused and is missing since, had rocked the union territory. Residents had taken to the streets against attempts to derail police investigations and the delay in Kamal's arrest.

According to the prosecution, Kamal had raped and murdered Parvathi, a post-graduate who had married the elder son of a diamond merchant, who had then been hospitalised. It all was over between 11 pm and 11.30 pm on July 14 last year, when the two and Padmavathi were at home, and Ravi Shah was by his hospital bed.

Witnesses told the court that Parvathi had felt uneasy at the glances of her brother-in-law, particularly her catching him peeping into her bedroom when she was with her husband. Based entirely on strong circumstantial evidence, the prosecution said that the rape was premeditated.

The murder weapon, a wooden log, had been hidden behind the air-conditioner in Parvathi's bedroom, when Kamal knocked at the door and complained of a severe bout of cough.

Kamal raped her after hitting her on the back of her head with a piece of brick and then with the log.

With Kamal taking Padmavathi into confidence, the family doctor and some friends were sent for. Attempts seemed to have been made to cover up the crime. The family doctor pronouncing Parvathi dead, there was no way of escaping a police inquiry, given Parvathi's recent marriage and Padmavathi too was not known as a model mother-in-law, to have escaped legal provisions on dowry deaths.

Legally, any death of a young housewife within seven years of marriage is deemed to be caused by dowry harassment, until proved otherwise.

However, even the police initially believed Kamal's story that masked intruders had raped and killed his sister-in-law and had stabbed him with a knife, which injury he had inflicted on himself before calling in the police. But the agonised agitation of Parvathi's family, backed in chorus by the locals, had its effect, and the police arrested Kamal, after preliminary investigations.

Padmavathi was arrested soon after, but Parvathi's husband Ravi is absconding.

The charge against him, at best, as Padmavathi's sentence would show, would have been of destroying evidence. The fact remained, as evidence showed, that Ravi had been brought into the picture only after Kamal and Padmavathi had cooked up the story about intruders, and after Kamal had inflicted the stab wound on himself.

While Kumar convicted Kamal and Padmavathi on Monday itself, he took a day before deciding on the sentence. The 110-page verdict he read out in the open court on Tuesday, followed a visit to a local temple.

Reports had stated that Kamal was of an unstable mind and was undergoing treatment at a local hospital.

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