2 weeks Ago By Express News Service
CHENNAI: A 12-year-old boy’s testimony about his father beating up his mother proved crucial for a Chennai trial court to recently convict the 40-year-old of murdering his wife and awarding him life imprisonment. This was despite the deceased’s mother, the de-facto complainant and Prosecution Witness number 1, turning hostile during the trial. The sessions court was delivering the judgment in a case pertaining to B Suresh (40), a railway employee dismissed from service, strangulating his wife Kalpana to death using their son’s belt in 2018.
It was the Thiru-vi-ka Nagar police inspector’s case that Suresh and Kalpana used to quarrel often as she was upset over him not being regular at his job and having an extra-marital affair. He murdered her on September 11, 2018, and later cooked up a story that she had died by suicide using her saree to hang from the ceiling fan. During the police investigation, several witnesses testified about the domestic violence perpetrated by the accused on the deceased.
However, the clinching evidence was the testimony of their elder son who said that a day before the murder, Suresh had punched Kalpana in the chest causing her to fall on a bed and then a table. This helped the prosecution establish the motive; the regular quarrels between them, for the murder. Though Kalpana’s mother turned hostile during trial, the court clarified that her evidence could not be rejected completely merely because of this, and the same could be accepted to the extent of her version being found dependable after scrutiny.
Her testimony that her daughter had confided in her about Suresh’s extra-marital affair had not been disputed and hence was admitted, the judge said. The murder itself was projected as a suicide by the defendant, but the prosecution debunked this by pointing out that the saree did not sustain any tear or cut. The judge also pointed out that if she had indeed died by hanging, her body would not have fallen on the floor as claimed by the accused, as the height of the bedroom was just about two feet higher than an almirah in the room.
The court also ordered compensation for the couple’s two sons payable out of the Victim Compensation Fund created under section 357A(1) of the CrPC..
