The prosecution examined a total of nine witnesses
Pune: A sessions court on Thursday convicted and sentenced an engineer to life imprisonment for throttling his sister (23) to death in their rented flat in Bavdhan in the early hours of April 14, 2010, rejecting his defence that his severe depression amounted to legal insanity. Additional sessions judge Anilkumar K Sharma also rejected the defence plea to reduce the offence from murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and consider the incident as a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304-II of the IPC. The convict, Subhojit Basu (29 at the time of the offence), attempted suicide by slashing his wrists and consuming phenyl after the incident in April 2010. “Basu was out on bail two months and 18 days after his arrest on the day of the incident.
He was taken into custody and sent to prison soon after the court pronounced the sentence,” special public prosecutor Leena Pathak told TOI . Initial police investigation suggested that Basu suffered from depression and his condition was aggravated by being unemployed despite high qualifications. After the assault and suicide bid, he called his former IIT professor. The latter alerted the police control room. A Hinjewadi police team then reached the flat. Judge Sharma held that the plea did not find “any substantive support from the evidence on record. At the same time, the prosecution established, based on the evidence discussed …, that the deceased died a homicidal death and that the accused was responsible for causing her death.”
Psychiatrist Dr Nishikant Thorat acknowledged that Basu suffered from severe depression and had an HDRS (Hamilton Depression Ratings Scale) score of 37, but stated that he showed no features of insanity.”
Pathak said, “The medical evidence we furnished during the trial proved crucial in the conviction of the accused. The court referred to the mitigating and aggravating circumstances of the case, including no criminal antecedents of the accused, and held that the case did not fall within the rarest of the rare definition to merit a death sentence.