A Session court in Anantnag has sentenced a CRPF constable to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife by strangulation inside their residential quarters at a CRPF camp in 2021.
The Court of the Additional Sessions Judge, Anantnag sentenced Shankara Naik to life imprisonment following his conviction in an FIR (57/2021) registered at Police Station Anantnag under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC.
According to the prosecution, on March 29, 2021, following a domestic quarrel, the accused allegedly strangled his wife, Sama Bhai, with a scarf inside their residential room at the CRPF Camp in Raghunath Mandir, Sheerbagh Anantnag. He subsequently informed his superior officers, following which police registered the case and launched an investigation.
During the trial, the prosecution examined medical experts, forensic specialists, investigating officers and other witnesses. The post-mortem and forensic evidence established that the victim died due to ligature strangulation, conclusively ruling the death as homicidal, the court said.
The Court, after evaluating the evidence, concluded that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the deceased suffered an unnatural homicidal death inside the room exclusively occupied by the couple. The chain of circumstantial, medical and scientific evidence pointed solely to the guilt of the accused and was inconsistent with any hypothesis of innocence, the court noted.
Moreover, the court underscored that the accused failed to provide any satisfactory explanation for the circumstances in which his wife sustained the fatal injuries while in his exclusive company. The defence version, it said, was neither probable nor supported by evidence capable of creating reasonable doubt.
Consequently, the court convicted the accused under Section 302 of IPC and sentenced him to undergo imprisonment for life besides imposing a fine in accordance with law.
