Kolkata:
A city court on Friday awarded capital punishment to a man and life sentence to his wife for murdering a toddler who was his nephew and the child’s mother over a property dispute in 2008.
Holding that the murder of a one-year-old child falls under the category of the rarest of rare crime, additional district and sessions judge Chinmoy Chatterjee sentenced Satya Saha to death.
Saha’s wife Nandita was awarded life sentence for the crime committed on December 14, 2008.
The judge had convicted the man and his wife on Thursday.
Satya and his brother Bidyut lived in the same premises at Suren Sarkar Road in Beliaghata in the eastern part of the city with their families.
The brothers were in dispute over the property in which they lived, prosecution lawyer Md Abu Bakar Dhali said.
Satya, aided by his wife Nandita, strangulated the mother and the child to death.
The body of the boy was found from a ditch near R G Kar Hospital in north Kolkata a day after the murder, while that of his mother was discovered in a bush beside Durgapur Expressway in Dankuni the next day, Dhali said.
Nandita was arrested on December 16, 2008, four days after the crime, while her husband Satya was apprehended on February 10, 2009.
Charged with murder and conspiracy, they were tried before the Sealdah District and Sessions Court.
