HC upholds doctor's life sentence in double murder case

The Bombay High Court has upheld life imprisonment awarded to a doctor who was found guilty of killing his wife and son following a domestic quarrel in 2001.
"On going through the record, we find there is sufficient evidence to connect the appellant with the crime and hence we find no merit in his appeal," observed Justices V K Tahilramani and P D Kode recently.
The Sangli Sessions Court had awarded life sentence to Dr Gurudatta alias Janmejaykumar Shankar Gavade in March 2003 after he was found guilty of murdering his wife, Pushpa, also a doctor and son, Shantunu.
The doctor had killed his wife by hitting her with an iron rod on the head and drowning his four-year-old son in a drum of water.

Pushpa and Gurudatta were doctors practicing in Sangli. They got married in 1996. Shantunu was born to them in 1997.
However, Dr Gavade was not doing well in practice and used to tell his wife to get money from her father. However, Pushpa was of the view that they would make a living with their practice.

Gavade also insisted upon his brother to partition land belonging to the family but Pushpa was not in favour of this and prevailed upon her husband not to seek partition of the land.
On the intervening night of November 6 and 7, 2001, Gavade killed his wife with an iron rod and concealed the blood stained weapon in a heap of wooden furniture in his compound.

Gavade threw away his blood stained clothes, house keys and notebook behind a petrol pump. Then he went and stayed with his friend Umaje.
The doctors had hired a premises owned by Ananda and were using it as a dispensary.
Ananda got a telephone call on November 7 saying that doctor's wife and son had been killed and their bodies were lying in the house rented by them.
However, the caller did not identify himself but Ananda recognised the voice of the caller as that of Gavade.
Ananda informed police who found the bodies lying in the house and registered a case of double murder.