Woman, paramour sentenced to life in husband's murder case

A sessions court on Friday sentenced a woman and her paramour to life imprisonment for conspiracy and murder of her husband in 2017 in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district.

The sessions judge at the Barasat Fourth Fast Track Court, B Sarkar, sentenced Ajit Roy and Manua Majumdar to life imprisonment, and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on each.

Both of them will have to serve another one year in prison if they do not pay the fine.

The court had on Thursday held Roy guilty of murder and Majumdar for conspiring with him to kill her husband Anupam Singha.

"We would have been satisfied, had they got death sentence," Kalpana Singha, Anupam's mother said as she sobbed uncontrollably outside the court room following the pronouncement of the sentence.

Several neighbours of Singha were at the court along with his parents, who are residents of Bangladesh and have come here to hear the judgment.

Posters and placards had appeared outside the Barasat court premises demanding the highest possible punishment for the guilty on Thursday.

While the maximum punishment for murder is death or life imprisonment, anyone found guilty of conspiracy for murder is liable to be punished in the same manner, if he/she had abetted such an offence.

Singha was found murdered at his home on May 2, 2017 at Hridaypur area of Barasat, about 25 km from Kolkata.

The police had arrested Majumdar from her parents' home in Barasat town and Roy was apprehended subsequently.

Roy had entered Singha's residence with duplicate keys provided by Majumdar, who was at her parents' house at that time. He was asked to give live updates of the murder of her husband, who was bludgeoned to death, the prosecution submitted before the court.

The victim, who was 34 in 2017, had married Singha the year before.