Forensic report leads to life term for killing minor

A forensic report can prove that even the dead can tell a tale, a court here said while awarding life terms to two men for killing a minor, in a case where medical evidence connected the accused with the crime.

"It is said that 'Dead men do not tell a tale', but forensics has changed it all. It has proved that even the dead can indeed tell a tale, as has happened in the present case," Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said while awarding life terms to Mohammad Jafar and Mohammad Tanvir for killing a four-year-old child.

The court said the forensic evidence conclusively connected both the accused with the crime.

According to the prosecution, Jafar and Tanvir killed the boy by slashing his neck and wrist with a blade in October 2011 in west Delhi's Keshav Puram.

The court said medical and forensic evidence established the presence of the blood of the child on the shirts of Jafar and Tanvir and on the shaving blade used as a weapon, the neck hair of Tanvir recovered from the hand of the deceased and other various things confirmed the involvement of the duo in the crime.

The court turned down the plea of the convicts seeking leniency in the sentence, saying the murder of the child was committed "in a brutal manner... only because the convicts wanted to teach a lesson to his father" with whom they had a quarrel over a cable wire in front of their room a week prior to the incident.

The court said who could have thought that the convicts, who were in a drunken state at the time of the quarrel "which was totally insignificant, would have gone to the extent of taking the life of a harmless child only to seek revenge" after the father of the child slapped one of them.

The court, in the order delivered May 24 but which was released Monday, also slapped a fine of Rs.1 lakh each on the convicts and said the amount should be given to the family of the child as compensation.