12.5 years not enough: Court refuses to slash lifer’s sentence | Kolkata News

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday refused to reduce the sentence of a lifer, convicted of stabbing to death his extramarital partner who had asked him to marry her, stating the argument that the convict had “suffered enough for 12.5 years for a soured extramarital relationship” was not acceptable. “Not only did the victim go through such disturbed extramarital relations but the convict also premeditated the offence in question to end the victim’s life,” the bench held.Saroj Roy alias Sushanta was married and had a child. He had an extramarital relationship with the victim for nearly seven years. Roy was apparently unhappy with both his wife and extramarital partner. In his diary, Roy wrote that if the extramarital partner did not stop asking him to marry her, he would kill her and then die by suicide. Roy was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Dec 9, 2019, for murdering his extramarital partner and was fined Rs 50,000. The incident, described in Roy’s diary, came true on Sept 26, 2013. On his way to office, he went to the victim’s house in Patuli at 7.30 am. While the victim’s mother was in the bathroom, she heard a quarrel between the couple and then a shriek from her daughter. The mother rushed out of the bathroom to find her daughter, blood-spattered, and beside her, was the convict, lying unconscious with injuries. A kitchen knife was found nearby. While the victim died of her injuries in a govt hospital, Roy survived. The victim had 11 injuries to vital organs, such as her heart and lungs, and she suffered excessive blood loss from arteries from the different stab injuries. An expert also confirmed the convict’s handwriting in the note, in which he had written he would kill his partner if she insisted on marriage.Roy’s counsel argued that even though he killed the woman, it was to be considered under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of IPC, calling it a crime of “passion and emotion”. But the division bench refused this explanation, saying he wrote in his diary about killing her and consuming poison, and he carried a kitchen knife to her house, which was “extremely unusual for a person”. Both the acts indicated premeditation, the court said.