A woman and her lover in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut were reportedly served death sentence by a court on Friday for killing her husband and leaving a live snake beside his body to make it look like a case of snakebite.
The convicts have been identified as Ravita and Amardeep who reportedly plotted to kill Amit Kashyap alias Mikky Kashyap, a resident of Akbarpur Sadat village in Meerut, news agency PTI reported.
The death sentence was awarded by additional district and sessions judge Jaiveer Singh Nagar.
How post-mortem exposed the murder plot
Amit was found dead on a cot in his house on April 13 last year and a live snake was found beside his body. His family initially suspected that he died due to a snakebite.
However, the the case took a different turn when post-mortem examination revealed injury marks on his neck and nose and concluded that he died of strangulation, police was quoted as saying.
The death sentence in the cases comes days after the Meerut district court sentenced Muskan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla to death for the murder of her husband Saurabh Rajput in the Meerut blue drum case.
District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra pronounced the sentence, court officials said. Both Muskan and Sahil were produced before the court through video conferencing, news agency PTI reported.
Muskan and Sahil were found guilty on September 30, of killing an ex-Merchant Navy officer, Saurabh Rajput. His body was allegedly found concealed inside a blue drum at his house.
The duo were ordered to pay a fine of ₹50,000. “The court has also imposed fines of ₹50,000 under Section 302 and ₹20,000 under Section 238A,” Advocate Krishan Kumar Dubey said, according to ANI.
“Both have been sentenced to death for the crime. They have been ordered to pay a fine of ₹50,000 under Section 302 and ₹20,000 under Section 238A. It is a historic verdict. The entire nation was watching; the eyes of the public were fixed on what punishment the perpetrators of this crime would receive. They appeared to be in a state of shock; they were stunned. One can imagine the mental state of someone facing the death penalty,” he said.
“The defense had presented arguments—such as the fact that no one actually witnessed the murder and that both accused have daughters—but these were all set aside because the evidence presented by the prosecution was so strong, significant, and precise that it conclusively proved their guilt.”