Mumbai: Man who chopped, stored French wife’s body in fridge jailed for life

An Indian who murdered his French wife before chopping up her body and hiding it in a fridge three years ago was jailed for life on Thursday, police said.

A man who murdered his French wife before chopping up her body and hiding it in a fridge three years ago in Mumbai was jailed for life on Thursday, police said.

Girish Pote was awarded life imprisonment for chopping up his French wife’s body and hiding it in a fridge three years ago.

Girish Pote, 38, was found guilty on Wednesday of killing 33-year-old Madhuwanti Pathak on December 3, 2013 because she wanted to leave India to return to France, where she was born and raised.

Pote murdered her in the flat they shared in Bhayandar, a northern suburb in Mumbai, after he purchased knives from a nearby shopping mall, a judge ruled.

“The accused has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife,” Dinkar Murlidhar Pingle, the police officer who led the investigation, told AFP.

The court heard how Pote decided to chop up his wife’s body and hide it in a refrigerator in their flat so his crime could not be detected by CCTV cameras installed in the lobby and lift of their building.

“Madhuwanti wanted to go back to France after selling the property in Mumbai. During investigation, Pote revealed that his wife disliked India and wanted to take the money and fly back to France.”

“But he had opposed the idea, leading to frequent fights between them,” prosecutor Bhuleshwar Hinge had told the court during the trial, according to PTI.

The couple had married in June 2011, the court heard, and had a child who was two years old at the time of Pathak’s death, PTI reported.

Pathak’s mother, who was a French musician, owned the flat where the couple lived, the court heard. Pathak, whose father was Indian, held a French passport.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty but the judge at Thane district court, in the north of Mumbai, told a packed courtroom that Pote would remain in prison until his “biological end”, PTI said.