CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has increased the life imprisonment sentence by a trial court to lifer with a 20 years rider for a woman convicted in the gruesome murder of a one-and-half year-old boy by severing his head and hand at Kodia Kahania village of Nayagarh district on March 28, 2014.
The court of Additional Sessions Judge, Nayagarh convicted Jyostna Sahoo, a woman of the village, for killing the infant and sentenced her to life imprisonment on June 29, 2017. She filed a criminal appeal in the high court on August 23, 2017.
Delivering judgment on the criminal appeal on August 16, the division bench of Justice Debabrata Dash and Justice SK Panigrahi confirmed Jyostna’s conviction but on sentence, opined,”The degree of brutality and depravity of the assailant is enhanced manifold when one considers the fact that the act was committed in respect of and against a boy of only one-and-half-year-old. The act was enough to shock our judicial conscience leading us to believe that the punishment for imprisonment for life simpliciter would hardly be adequate or proportionate.”
The bench observed that the convict not only intentionally murdered the child in the most brutal manner but also followed with more gruesome acts to hid complicity. “Nothing else can possibly explain the act of severing the head and hand; keeping the body in a container and throwing the head in a pond as also keeping the detached hand in the house to be later on dealt with in throwing somewhere in a deserted place or keeping in any other place so that the same would not invite the attention of anyone,” the bench observed.
While holding that the crime would not fall under the rarest of the rare case to attract death penalty, the bench observed that simple life imprisonment would not be commensurate to the “abominable and diabolical nature”, as it may be restricted to only 14 years.
“We, therefore, hold that the sentence of imprisonment for life with a cap of 20 years for the case. She shall not be eligible to claim remission as per law before undergoing a minimum of 20 years of imprisonment,” the bench said.