Three sentenced to life imprisonment for murder

Kanpur: Additional district and sessions judge, Kanpur Nagar, Sapna Tripathi, on Monday awarded life imprisonment to accused Rajesh Yadav, Rozi Yadav and Govind alias Golu for committing murder and destroying evidence. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on each.The court observed in the 63-page judgement that Rs 40,000 from the total fine amount of Rs 75,000 should be given to the complainant as compensation. The court held the accused persons guilty of murder on April 2, and heard arguments on the quantum of sentence on Monday.The defence counsel pleaded that since accused Rozi Yadav was a woman, it was the first offence committed by Govind alias Golu, Rajesh Yadav and Rozi Yadav and all the three accused were in judicial custody from the day of their arrest, therefore, the court should take a lenient view in awarding sentence and fine. On the other hand, additional district government counsel Vinod Tripathi and the complainant's counsel pleaded that the accused had committed the serious offence of murder of the complainant's grandson Sudhanshu and destroyed evidence of the murder. Rajesh Yadav had earlier been sentenced for his wife's murder, who was Sudhanshu's mother.The deceased had not demanded distribution of property, even then the accused killed him. The offence committed by them came under the ambit of rare of the rarest and was against society, therefore, they should be punished with maximum sentence. Accused Rajesh Yadav should be awarded capital punishment, the ADGC argued.Complainant Shyam Babu stated that his daughter Archana Yadav was married to Rajesh Yadav in December 1996. Rajesh and his parents had killed Archana for dowry and were awarded life imprisonment by the court and were on bail, the ADGC said.Shyam Babu stated that after Archana's death, he brought her son Sudhanshu alias Sunny, (his grandson,) and nurtured him. After Archana's death Rajesh, during the bail period, had married Rozi Yadav. Later, Rajesh tried to get back the custody of Sudhanshu, but Shyam Babu did not send the boy to Rajesh's custody.The accused lured Sudhanshu and often used to go to meet them. On June 6, 2022, they called Sudhanshu and he went to their place in Kanpur. Thereafter, Sudhanshu did not return. Shyam Babu came to know from different sources that the accused had killed Sudhanshu by administering poison at Harjinder Nagar on the intervening night of June 12 and 13, 2022 and tried to dispose of the body to destroy evidence.With the help of police and family members, he intercepted the accused at Nagla Gude village and recovered Sudhanshu's dead body which bore some injuries and had turned blue, and his mouth was filled with froth.