MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently reduced the life sentence imposed on a Mexican man for murdering his former live-in partner in 2012, to four years rigorous imprisonment. The court opined that the murder was not a premeditated one and that the man should instead be convicted for ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’.
The order was passed by a bench, comprising Justices CV Karthikeyan and R Poornima, on an appeal filed by the man, Martin Montrique Mansoor, challenging the conviction and sentence imposed by the Madurai Mahila Court in 2020. According to the prosecution, Mansoor and the deceased, Cecile Denise Acosta, were in a live-in relationship and the couple had a daughter. After a few years, their relationship strained and following a legal battle over the custody of the child, a Mexican court had ruled that both parents would separately retain the custody of the child for 14 months.
Mansoor had then come to India along with his child and worked as a research assistant at a university in Virudhunagar, and his former partner had also enrolled herself in a university in Kerala. While Mansoor’s turn was going to end in August 2012, Acosta had planned a summer vacation in Barcelona and had wanted to take their daughter before her custody period commenced. The duo allegedly had an argument over the matter, during which an enraged Mansoor hit Acosta, causing her death. To cover up the murder, he severed Acosta’s arm and stuffed her body into a suitcase. Later, he dumped the body in Madurai and set it on fire. He further filed a missing persons complaint with the police to avoid suspicion. However, the police arrested him and he was later proven guilty.
While the bench observed that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that Acosta had died at the hands of Mansoor, it opined that Mansoor did not intend to cause her death. “There must have been a sustained quarrel over the custody leading to an act of violence on the spur of the moment,” the judges observed. They set aside the conviction under Section 302 (Murder) IPC and convicted him under Section 304 (Part II) IPC, thereby modifying his life sentence to four-year rigorous imprisonment. They also reduced the sentence under Section 201 IPC from five years to one year.