The court of additional district judge III, Auraiya, in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday sentenced a woman to death for killing her three children by drowning them in a river in June last year, while her lover and partner in crime was awarded life term.
Additional district judge III Saif Ahmad also imposed a fine of ₹1 lakh each on the convicts. Additional district government counsel Umesh Rajput said the case pertains to Barua village under Phaphund police station limits.
As per reports, Priyanka Savita, 30, was married to Avneesh of Luhia village of Etawah district around 10 years ago. The couple had four sons: Sonu, 8, Madhav, 6, Aditya, 5 and Mangal, 2. Avneesh died of electrocution in 2021. After his death, Priyanka stayed in her in-laws’ home for around 18 months before returning to her parental home in Barua in 2023 with her four children.
Following disputes with family members, she along with her children shifted to Auraiya town. She began living there with Ashish, 31, her husband’s cousin. In time, quarrels arose between Priyanka and Ashish who wanted her to kill her children if she wanted to continue living with him.
Distressed by these arguments, Priyanka told her children they were visiting their maternal grandparents and left the house with them on June 27, 2024. She took them by an auto-rickshaw to Deorapur and from there proceeded to the Sengar river bridge near Keshampur village. At the riverbank, she gave the children something to eat. When they began to feel drowsy, Priyanka started drowning them one by one into the river.
{{/usCountry}}Distressed by these arguments, Priyanka told her children they were visiting their maternal grandparents and left the house with them on June 27, 2024. She took them by an auto-rickshaw to Deorapur and from there proceeded to the Sengar river bridge near Keshampur village. At the riverbank, she gave the children something to eat. When they began to feel drowsy, Priyanka started drowning them one by one into the river.
{{/usCountry}}Believing all her children to be dead, Priyanka fled back to Barua village. Aditya, Madhav, and Mangal died at the spot due to drowning. The survival of her one son Sonu led to the registration of a case by the police, said ADGC Umesh Rajput. Later, the accused were arrested and after investigation, the chargesheet was filed in court, which considered the case as rarest of the rare category before sentencing the two.