BENGALURU: Suspecting the wife’s character, installing GPS in her car without her knowledge, open dying declaration given by her before committing suicide, and extra-judicial confession made by accused Rajesh G played a vital role in landing him in jail with the city court sentencing him to rigorous life imprisonment for murdering lawyer Amit Keshavamurthy by shooting him in the chest with a pistol.
Businessman Rajesh’s (38) wife Shruthi Gowda, working as a panchayat development officer, had hanged herself at a lodge, unable to tolerate the death of Amit who was declared dead when she took him to a hospital in her car, after Rajesh shot him in Soladevanahalli police limits, in 2017. Before committing suicide at a lodge near the hospital, Shruthi had told her cousin Shwetha over the phone to take care of her two children as she no longer wanted to live, saying the life of an innocent person, Amit, had been lost. The court considered it an open dying declaration.
“Here the person (victim) is the eyewitness to the crime, and the exclusion of her statement would tend to defeat the ends of justice. A dying declaration is considered to be credible and trustworthy, based upon the general belief that most people, who know that they are about to die do not lie,” said Hosamani Pundalik, the First Additional District and Sessions Judge, Bengaluru Rural District.
The court said Rajesh made an extra-judicial confession to Shruthi’s father Bettaswami, who deposed that on the day of the incident, Rajesh called him around 2.55 pm saying he had shot Amit near Acharya College when Amit and Shruthi were sitting in a Swift car. This confession is clearly admissible under Section 6 of the Evidence Act, the court added.
Sentencing Rajesh to rigorous life imprisonment under Section 302 of IPC, and to pay Rs 1 lakh fine, the court also sentenced him to simple imprisonment for four months and imposed Rs 2,000 fine under Section 30 of the Arms Act. The sentence will run concurrently and the period Rajesh spent in judicial custody is set off as against the sentence against him, the court ordered. He has been in judicial custody since his arrest on Jan 14, 2017.