A sessions court has sentenced a 38-year-old man to life imprisonment for strangling his roommate to death over a financial dispute in June 2017.
As per the prosecution, accused Pankaj Mishra and victim Amrut Gauda had rented the house of one Sunita Surshe. While Gauda drove a rickshaw of one Lalchand Jaiswal, Mishra worked in a courier firm.
On June 6, 2017, the victim started demanding money from the accused, which led to a quarrel between them and subsequently the latter strangled the former with a cloth in the presence of Jaiswal, said the prosecution.
Jaiswal immediately alerted Surshe, who along with other locals reached the house and found Gauda lying unconscious in the bathroom. Mishra tried to flee, but he was caught by the public, who handed him over to the police.
In his defence, the accused claimed that Surshe had given the room on rent to him, while denying that Gauda lived with him. He further contended that he was not in the room when the murder took place and that Jaiswal and Surshe were framing him.
The court disbelieved his defence and observed, “It is established in the evidence submitted by the prosecution that prior to the incident, the accused and deceased were residing in the same room.” There was a quarrel between them during the night and in the early hours on the day of the incident. Therefore, the accused strangled the deceased, said the judge.
“The very nature of the act reflects clear intention on Mishra’s part to cause Gauda’s death. Hence, it clearly fits in the definition of murder,” the court said.
