Man, two others, get life term for strangling wife

A man, who had strangled his wife in 2009 after his in-laws did not fulfil the dowry demands, and his two friends have been sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment by a Delhi court.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 17,000 each on Sunil, Harish and Madan after holding them guilty for various offences including under sections 302 (murder) of the IPC.
"I am of the opinion that prosecution has proved every link in the chain of circumstantial evidence that the deceased having been brought to her matrimonial home was murdered by the accused persons," additional sessions judge Vijay Kumar Dahiya said.

According to police, Sunil, along with his friends, had murdered his wife Monika and had disposed her body in a canal here in April 2009. After receiving a call about the incident, police reached the spot where Sunil's brother handed over the accused to them and Sunil confessed that he had murdered her.
Sunil also confessed that Harish and Madan planned the murder and strangulated her using a rope and threw her body in a nearby canal, police said, adding both the co-accused were apprehended and they too confessed that Monika was murdered.
Police later recovered Monika's body from the canal.

Sunil confessed that he got married to Monika against his will in July 2008 and when he tried to get rid of her, his in-laws threatened him and then he shared his feeling with his friends Harish and Madan, police said, adding the trio then planned to kill her.

Police also told the court that the three accused had given disclosure statements about the murder. During the trial, the accused, however, denied all the incriminating evidence against them and claimed they were falsely implicated in the case.
The defence counsel contended that the prosecution's case was full of "material contradictions" and vital discrepancies were there in the depositions of the prosecution witnesses.

The court, after going through the evidence and statements of witnesses, held the trio guilty saying Sunil was "last seen in the company of the deceased when she was brought back from her parental home" and he was supposed to bring her back.
It also observed that the body was recovered on the basis of the joint disclosure statements of the trio and Sunil was having a motive to eliminate his wife as his in-laws were not fulfilling his demand.
"At the very outset, the (three) convicts committed murder of the deceased, who was wife of one of the accused persons... The death in this case was caused due to strangulation," the court said.