Chandigarh, March 23 — A local court has sentenced Sandeep Kumar, a Himachal Pradesh resident, to life imprisonment for raping and murdering a widow at a hotel in Baltana in 2021.
The court of additional district and sessions judge Vikrant Kumar found Sandeep guilty of sexually assaulting the woman under a false promise of marriage before strangling her to death. The court also imposed a fine of ₹20,000 on the convict, a native of Dobar village, Una. The detailed order with observations is awaited.
According to the police, the victim, who worked as a cleaner at a hotel on the Patiala-Zirakpur road, had lost her husband to an illness in 2019. She later befriended Sandeep, who promised to marry her but eventually backed out and began harassing her, leaving her depressed, her paternal cousin said in the complaint.
On September 8, 2021, Sandeep called her to the Baltana hotel. The next morning, she was found dead.
The cousin initially suspected suicide following a spat between the two and filed a complaint. Based on this, police registered a case under Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
However, the autopsy revealed she was raped and strangled, prompting police to add Sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) to the FIR.
“The accused initially claimed the woman hanged herself from a ceiling fan, and he got her down. But the autopsy confirmed she was strangled after being sexually assaulted in an inebriated state,” police said in the chargesheet.
