Father-son duo awarded life term for murdering woman in Bihar

A local court on Monday sentenced the term and slapped a fine of Rs 14,000 each on the two

Father-son duo awarded life term for murdering woman in Bihar

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Begusarai (Bihar): A man and his son have been awarded life imprisonment for killing a woman after branding her as a witch in Bihar's Begusarai district four years ago. A local court on Monday sentenced the term and slapped a fine of Rs 14,000 each on the two.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Raj Kishore Rai held Alijan Miyan and his son Shabbir Miyan guilty of murdering the woman, who was their neighbour, on October 21, 2015.

In another similar case, a 34-year-old man allegedly killed his wife because she could not bear a child for him. The alleged incident occurred in April at Raval camp in Antop Hill, where the accused hung her body from the ceiling fan after strangling her to death. The accused was arrested on Sunday.

The accused, identified as Naresh Sabharwal (34) and his wife Supriya (34), had been married since 2010. On April 7, the accused had an argument with his wife following which she locked herself in the bedroom. However, when she didn't come out of the room for a long time, he broke the door open and found her body hanging from the ceiling fan.

Based on Naresh's statement, the police filed a case of accidental death. But the police claimed that they found inconsistencies in Sabharwal’s statements during probe; meanwhile, Supriya's body was then sent for post-mortem.

Supriya’s brother, Deepak Pandey, approached the police on April 27 and gave a statement that the couple had frequent arguments and so she took the extreme step.

On Friday, the police received the post mortem report, which revealed that the victim was murdered. The report further mentioned that there were no rope marks on Supriya’s neck and that she was strangled to death. After which, the police arrested Sabharwal for trying to portray the murder as a case of suicide.

(With inputs from PTI)