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Man gets life term for killing daughter in Kerala
The prosecution argued in court that the accused has financial liabilities due to mismanagement and wanted to exonerate himself from them
Kochi: The Ernakulam additional district and sessions court trying Pocso Act cases on Wednesday found a 40-year-old man guilty of murdering his 10-year-old daughter in 2021 and sentenced him to life along with 28 years of rigorous imprisonment under sections of the IPC and Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act.
The court accepted the prosecution’s argument that Sanu Mohan, an interior designer, attempted to strangle his daughter at his residence after giving her Coca-Cola mixed with liquor and then threw her into the Muttar River where she died by drowning.
The incident, which took place on March 21, 2021, grabbed headlines in the state for the devious manner in which a father murdered his minor daughter.
PA Bindu, the public prosecutor in the case, told reporters, “The accused has been found guilty of all the offences charged against him by the police investigation team. This is an expected verdict because we were able to present all the relevant circumstantial evidence which the court accepted. The convict has been given term sentences cumulating to 28 years in prison following which his life sentence will begin.”
The accused was found guilty of the offences punishable under sections 302 (murder), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison), and 201 (destruction of evidence) under IPC and sections 75 (punishment for cruelty to children) and 77 (punishment for giving intoxicating substance to child) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and protection of children) Act, 2015.
The prosecution argued in court that the accused has financial liabilities due to mismanagement and wanted to exonerate himself from them. Though he loved his daughter, he was concerned about her future if he abandoned her and feared that she would be ignored by others in his absence. Therefore, he decided to murder his daughter before escaping from his liabilities.
“..there is no ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused as the chain of evidence is complete to prove the guilt of the accused. As already held, the explanation of the accused and in his statement are not satisfactory but false. On the other hand, it gives credence to the prosecution case,” Justice K Soman, who delivered the verdict, said.
“Therefore the evidence clearly excludes every possible hypothesis except the one that the victim girl Vaiga Sanu aged 10 years was murdered by the accused by throwing her in Muttar river on the night of 21.3.2021 by making her unconscious after intoxication and smothering,” the order read.
However, the court said that the case did not come under the ‘rarest of rare’ category and thus did not accept the prosecution demand for a death sentence to the accused.
