A 66-year-old retired bank employee from Vashi in Navi Mumbai was sentenced to life imprisonment by district court for killing his wife.
Thane Additional Sessions Judge V V Bambarde awarded the sentence to Jagmohan Thakur who had killed his 62-year-old wife with a hammer in 2013 after she refused to return to his native place in Himachal Pradesh.
The judge refereed to the circumstantial evidence and the deposition of witnesses which corroborated the incident and held the accused, an ex-employee of PNB, guilty of the charges under section 302 (murder) of the IPC.
The judge held that the prosecution has proved the case beyond reasonable doubt.
The prosecution examined as many as 11 witnesses including the son of the accused.
In his submission before the court, Additional Public Prosecutor Sanjay Londhe said the couple–Jagmohan and his wife Asha 62 (then) — a retired school teacher lived with their son and daughter-in-law in Vashi.
It was on October 7, 2013, around 7.30 AM, the domestic help noticed that the room of Asha and Jagmohan was bolted from outside. When she told son Tushar and his wife Kirti about it, they opened the door to see Asha lying in a pool of blood. She was rushed to a hospital but she was declared brought dead.
After murdering her, the accused had changed his clothes and bolted the door from outside and left. The police recovered the hammer and his blood-stained clothes from the scene of the offence.
It was also submitted that the accused was under tremendous strain as the bank he worked with had initiated a departmental inquiry against him.
He wanted to commit suicide around six months ago by jumping in front of a train. His family found the suicide note and managed to stop him from taking the extreme step.
The accused wanted to return to their native place in Himachal Pradesh. But his wife declined and they had a fight over it on the fateful night after which the accused attacked her with a hammer and killed her, the court was told.
