A Court in Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar sentenced a man to death for repeatedly stabbing his wife to death & attempting to murder his six-year-old daughter by slitting her throat two years ago.
On June 9, 2022, the convict, 46-year-old Sanjeet Dash, stabbed his wife Saraswati, who was a head nurse at a private hospital, 33 times at their residence in Ghatikia area of Bhubaneswar just a few days after she gave birth to their second daughter, according to the prosecution.
He also slit the throat of his first daughter, who was six years old, but she survived. He was arrested the next day & a charge-sheet was filed in Oct, 2022.
The Court of Second Additional Sessions Judge, Bhubaneswar, Bandana Kar, while pronouncing the judgment on Thursday, categorised the crime as “rarest of rare” & said, “No leniency thus should be shown to the convict… Hence, this court awards death sentence to the convict.”
The motive behind the killing of his wife is the birth of the second girl child & that was the reason for which the accused attempted to murder his first daughter as well, the court said.
Imposing the death penalty, therefore, for such “rarest of the rare crime” would serve as a deterrent to others who might contemplate similar heinous acts, it said.
The Court has also awarded life imprisonment to Dash. Both sentences will run concurrently subject to modification, commutation, remission or pardon granted to the convict.
While giving its observations on the trauma faced by the six-year-old girl, the court said, “The child, whom the Indian system of law doesn’t even permit to watch such monstrosity in films, would have had to live it on her own eyes.”