A man who murdered a 65-year-old woman in Maduravoyal in 2011 and stored her body in a refrigerator in his grocery shop for over a month, was awarded death sentence by a court on Wednesday.
Ravindra Bose, III Additional Sessions Judge in the Poonamallee court, said the case was certainly a “rarest of rare” instance where accused V Muthuselvam (26) had viciously snuffed out a life for gain.
Such a crime warranted maximum punishment in order to serve as a deterrent, Additional Public Prosecutor Andaman K Murugan told Express, quoting the judge.
On February 23, 2011, Maduravoyal police received a complaint from Ganapathi, a priest, claiming that his mother Jayalakshmi (65) had gone missing. A case was registered but there were no leads.
Meanwhile, Bhavani, a 24-year-old woman of the area came to the police station on March 11, 2011, and lodged a complaint that Muthuselvam had assaulted her with a knife seeking her chain after calling her to his house on the pretext that her child had come there and messed up his house. In self-defence, she snatched the knife and attacked him but he managed to snatch her chain and escape. Muthuselvam was arrested the next day and later remanded in custody.
Nearly a month later, traders next to the grocery shop run by Muthuselvam in the same area complained to his father that stench was emanating from the shop, which had remained closed since his arrest.
Muthuselvam’s father told them his son had mentioned about chicken stored in the shop and that could be the reason for the stench. When the shop was opened, they found a body dumped in the refrigerator in a gunny sack. It was later established that it was that of Jayalakshmi. The court also sentenced him to seven years imprisonment for assaulting and robbing the other woman.