55-year-old gets life imprisonment for killing his son over money dispute

Rajkot: A local court has sentenced a 55-year-old man to life imprisonment for murdering his own son in dispute over money in Kanesara village of Jasdan taluka in Rajkot district in March 2023.Additional sessions judge I B Pathan convicted Batuk Kukadiya for the murder of his 31-year-old son Mahesh Kukadiya and also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000.The incident took place late on the night of March 9, 2023. A day later, on March 10, Mahesh's mother Rekha Kukadiya lodged a complaint at Bhadla police station against her husband who was booked for murder.According to the complaint, Mahesh had gone to their farm in the village to irrigate the fields and usually slept there at night. When he did not return home the next morning, Rekha went to the farm to look for him. She found a person covered with a blanket. On lifting it, she discovered her son lying in a pool of blood with a deep head injury.DSP Kishorsinh Zala of Gondal division told TOI that the police became suspicious when Kukadiya's mobile phone was found switched off after the incident. During the search, his motorcycle was recovered from the village's outskirts. He was later traced using a drone search operation in the scrub areas between Bhetsuda and Kanesara villages.During interrogation, Kukadiya confessed that he had given land to his son for cultivation, but Mahesh refused to give him money from the produce. Enraged, he struck his son on the head with a stick, killing him on the spot. The police later recovered the stick, which had bloodstains on it.During the trial, the defence argued that there were no eyewitnesses and that no bloodstains were found on the accused's clothes, and therefore it could not be conclusively proven that Kukadiya had committed the murder.However, public prosecutor S K Vora told the court that both the deceased and the accused had blood group "A", and forensic tests confirmed that the blood found on the recovered stick was also of the same group and matched that of Mahesh. The weapon was recovered at the instance of the accused himself, which strongly established his involvement in the crime, the prosecution argued.The prosecution further stated that Kukadiya was in the habit of frequently demanding money from his sons, often quarrelling with them and harassing the family. Rekha had also consistently maintained that her husband had killed their son.