Calcutta High Court frees woman serving life sentence for 2008 child murder case

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has acquitted a Howrah woman who had been serving a life sentence for the alleged murder of a toddler, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.

A Division Bench of Justice Jay Sengupta and Justice Apurba Sinha Ray set aside the conviction of Mana Naskar, who was sentenced in 2012 to life imprisonment for the death of her neighbour’s 18-month-old son.

In August 2008, the child was left in the care of his grandmother. According to the prosecution, Naskar persuaded the grandmother to let the boy go and later strangled him before dumping the body in a nearby pond. A quarrel over a room in the family home was cited as the motive. The body was recovered the same day, and four years later a trial court found Naskar guilty and ordered life imprisonment. She remained in custody until the High Court’s order.

The judges said the trial court had leaned on the “last seen together” theory, but the link was unproven. The grandmother, the only witness claiming to have handed the child to the accused, had admitted to hostile relations with her, making her testimony unreliable.

The Bench also flagged a major gap: the person who first relayed the allegation was never examined by investigators. What followed, it said, was largely hearsay repeated by villagers, evidence too weak to sustain a conviction.

Clashing medical reports deepened the doubt. The inquest noted drowning with no injuries, while the autopsy cited homicidal asphyxia with a tracheal wound. Under cross-examination, the doctor conceded that water and mud were present in the body, leaving the exact cause of death uncertain.

The judges stressed that in cases built only on circumstantial evidence, every link must be firmly proved and lead only to the accused.

Here, missing witnesses, contradictory testimony and unresolved forensic findings broke the chain. The alleged motive, they added, was too flimsy to explain the killing

of a child. Acquitting Naskar, the court ordered her immediate release unless required in another case. She must furnish a bond to secure her presence if the state files an appeal. All pending applications were disposed of.