The Hindu : Other States / Pondicherry News : Clerk gets life sentence for murder

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Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005

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Clerk gets life sentence for murder

By Our Staff Reporter

PONDICHERRY, FEB. 22. The Principal District and Sessions Judge of the Chinnapandi Court here today sentenced a 29-year-old man working as a lower division clerk in the Health Department to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs. 5,000 on him for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.

The prosecution case was that one Mahesh, alias Babuji, had murdered a Home Guard, Mohanavalli (38), in broad daylight near the Venkatasubbareddiar statue on November 5, 2002.

It is reported that the two were involved in an illicit relationship.

Since the deceased refused to return Rs. 50,000 and 10 sovereigns of jewels to Mahesh, he threatened to kill her.

Mohanavalli was murdered when she alighted from a bus near the Aatupatti stand. She died on the spot.

The Public Prosecutor, K. Shanmugam, based his argument on wholly circumstantial evidence, since all four eyewitnesses in the case — the driver, the conductor and two passengers — turned hostile during the proceedings.

Mr. Shanmugam had linked facts, such as Mahesh's recovery of the knife with which he had committed the murder, Mohanavalli's son and her second husband recalling that she had been threatened over phone, the person who sold Mahesh the knife identifying him, the fact that Mahesh was absent from work on the day of the incident and the Hyderabad forensic laboratory's confirmation that the blood on the knife was human blood.

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