VIJAYAWADA: “I lost my daughter for no reason. Life after her murder is very painful. No parent should face such a situation and the agony we had to go through in the last four years,” Singavarapu Jonathan Surendra Prasad, father of Esther Anuhya who was raped and murdered in Mumbai in 2014, said.
He expressed his faith in the judicial system after the Bombay High Court on Thursday confirmed death sentence for Chandrabhan Sanap who was convicted by a lower court of rape and murder of 23-year-old Anuhya, a TCS employee.
“We feel grateful after the High Court upheld the death penalty to Sanap for kidnapping and killing my daughter. Judgments like this should be considered a strong warning to men who take women for granted,” he told Express over phone.
“Women in our society are living in fear. So I request the government to implement strong laws for punishing eve-teasers and rapists.”
While delivering the judgement, a division bench of justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre said the prosecution had proved the case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt.
“The case of the appellant deserves to be in the category of ‘rarest of rare’ and it also amounts to the devastation of social trust. It shocks the social conscience and calls for an extreme penalty,” it said.
On January 5, 2014, Esther, a techie from Machilipatnam, was offered a lift by Sanap on his two-wheeler from Lokmanya Tilak Terminus to her hostel in Andheri (West). After killing her, Esther’s body was burnt and disposed at an isolated location near Bhandup.
Esther had left for Mumbai only a day earlier after celebrating Christmas with her family. Sanap, a petty thief, was arrested on March 3, 2015, and was given death sentence by the Bombay Women’s Session Court on October 30 of that year.