Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has upheld the conviction of a woman and her partner for the murder of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy but commuted the death penalty awarded by a Howrah court to life imprisonment, directing that they must serve a minimum of 40 years without remission.
The Division Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md. Shabbar Rashidi delivered the verdict on the death reference and connected appeals arising from the 2016 incident. On January 24, 2016, railway staff discovered a bag in a general coach of the Falaknama Express at Howrah station. Inside was the naked body of a male infant bearing bruises on the cheeks, lips, and back, fractures of both arms, nail scratches on the neck, and scalp haemorrhage. The autopsy surgeon confirmed the injuries were ante-mortem and homicidal.
Investigations traced the child to Hasina Sultana of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. She had earlier left her mother’s home with the boy and was living with her partner, Vannur Sha, in a rented house in Hyderabad. The landlord testified that the couple stayed for 15 days with the child and later claimed he had been sent to his grandmother. The grandmother, however, confirmed she never saw the child again after Sultana left with him.
Police witnesses deposed that during interrogation, Sultana disclosed the child often cried, drawing protests from their landlord. To quiet him, the couple would beat him. On one occasion, while the child was unwell with a fever, he was assaulted and administered Cetirizine tablets. Soon after, the child turned cold and died. Sha then packed the body in a bag and abandoned it on the train to conceal evidence. Investigators later seized an empty strip of Cetirizine from the rented house, though chemical examination of the viscera detected no poison.
The High Court held that the victim was last seen alive with the two accused, and they failed to explain the circumstances of his death, warranting an adverse inference under the Evidence Act. The court, however, disregarded CCTV footage, photographs, and the retracted confession of Sultana due to procedural deficiencies.
On jurisdiction, the Bench ruled that since the body was recovered at Howrah railway station, the trial there was valid.
While affirming the conviction for murder and destruction of evidence, the judges commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment, citing the convicts’ poor socio-economic background, absence of criminal antecedents, and possibility of reformation. Both sentences will run concurrently.