A man punished with 10 years' imprisonment for his daughter's murder has been put behind bars for life by the Supreme Court which found the crime to be an honour killing.
The convict, Gandi Doddabasappa, was upset by a June 3, 2011 order of the Karnataka High Court holding him guilty for committing the death of his daughter Shilpa, within one year of her marriage with a boy Ravi Kumar of a lower caste. She was pregnant and had gone to the public toilet that day near her husband's home where she was hacked to death by her father using a sickle. The girl was nine months pregnant on the day of the incident, October 3, 2003.
Calling the father "frustrated" over his lingayat daughter's decision to marry a lower caste Naik boy, the HC set aside the order of his acquittal given by the trial court and pronounced him guilty for culpable homicide not amounting to murder (IPC Section 304 Part 1) and jailed him for 10 years.
Hoping for a reversal of fortune, the accused father told the apex court that the only person who claimed during the trial of having seen him at the crime spot was his daughter's mother-in-law. She claimed to see the accused walking out of the toilet holding a bloody sickle that he dumped at the nearby manure pit before escaping. She even told the Court that the deceased had cried, "Father don't kill me". Although trial court discarded this evidence to be "untrustworthy", HC accepted the same by linking it with forensic tests and recovery of weapon of offence.
The bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and AM Khanwilkar of the Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the HC order but went a step further by ordering his conviction under IPC Section 300 (murder) and awarding life term while ruling out death sentence.