The Bombay High Court has sustained the life imprisonment sentence handed to a 52-year-old man for the 2016 murder of his wife, ruling that the victim’s consistent oral dying declarations and the direct testimony of the couple’s minor child firmly established the crime.
In an order passed on August 28, a division bench comprising Justices Manish Pitale and Shreeram V Shirsat rejected the convict’s appeal challenging his August 2018 conviction under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The trial court had awarded him life imprisonment, imposed a fine of Rs 50,000, and directed that Rs 40,000 be paid to his sons upon the conclusion of the appeal period.
Reliance on Dying Declarations
The bench anchored its decision on the established legal principle of “nemo moriturus praesumitur mentire”—the presumption that an individual will not face their creator with a falsehood. The court observed that the oral dying declarations made by the victim to three independent prosecution witnesses—her brother, her landlord, and her cousin—were voluntary, coherent, and free from any tutoring or fabrication.
Judges noted that the victim remained capable of speech until reaching the hospital, making her contemporaneous identification of her husband as the assailant natural and credible rather than a product of imagination.
Son Identified Father and Weapon in Court
A key component of the prosecution’s case accepted by the court was the deposition of the couple’s son, who was a Class 2 student at the time of the incident. The child, who was present in the residence alongside his parents and brother, testified that his father inflicted knife blows to his mother’s back and stomach.
The court noted that the child categorically identified his father as the assailant during court proceedings and correctly identified the weapon used in the assault.
Incident and Trial Background
The incident occurred early on May 4, 2016. According to the prosecution, the victim’s brother received a phone call around 6:30 a.m. from his cousin, informing him that the husband had stabbed his sister. Upon arriving at the matrimonial home, the brother found her injured on a staircase outside the cousin’s residence and transported her to a hospital, where she died from her injuries the following day.
During the appeal, defense counsel Valmiky Narvekar argued that the prosecution lacked independent eyewitnesses, disputed the proof regarding the weapon’s use, and contended that the victim’s statements during the ambulance ride were unreliable. Assistant Public Prosecutor Sharmila Kaushik opposed the appeal, asserting that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and refuting claims that the recovered knife had not undergone forensic examination.
The High Court dismissed the defense objections, concluding that the eyewitness testimony of the son and the unprompted dying declarations left no room for reasonable doubt regarding the husband’s guilt.
