A man and a woman who had been in an extramarital affair were sentenced to death in Meerut on Friday for killing her husband.
Ravita and her lover, Amardeep, killed the woman's husband, Amit Kashyap. They strangled him and later threw a snake at him to pass off the murder as death due to snakebite. Their crime surfaced after the police found out that the snake had been defanged and was not poisonous.
The accused woman and the victim have three children.
Announcing the verdict, the judge said that the district magistrate will now take care of the children.
"A wife observes Karva Chauth for her husband's long life...this act committed against her husband is unforgivable," the judge added.
This is the second couple to have received the death penalty for such a crime in Meerut in a week.
Earlier this week, Muskaan Rastogi and Sahil Shukla were handed the death sentence by a local court in Meerut for murdering Saurabh Rajput, the woman's husband.
After 126 hearings and 22 witness statements, District Judge Arvind Kumar Mishra ruled that Rastogi and Shukla conspired to kill Saurabh Rajput and concealed his dismembered body inside a blue industrial drum using concrete and sand. The judge had commented that such crimes create fear in society at large.