The gruesome murder executed by Punjilal Meher, an English lecturer and former principal at Jyoti Vikas College, had triggered statewide furore as death danced in ugly form at the marriage reception function in Patnagarh town with the instant death of the duo on 23 February, 2018.
Photo: SNS
A Court in Odisha’s Bolangir district on Wednesday sentenced an English lecturer of a private college to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of authoring and executing the wedding gift bomb explosion that snuffed the life of a newly-married software engineer and octogenarian grandmother and critically wounded his wife seven years back.
The gruesome murder executed by Punjilal Meher, an English lecturer and former principal at Jyoti Vikas College, had triggered statewide furore as death danced in ugly form at the marriage reception function in Patnagarh town with the instant death of the duo on 23 February, 2018.
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Additional sessions judge of Patnagarh Sonali Patnaik, who pronounced the verdict, termed the crime “heinous” and awarded the convict, Punjilal Meher, life imprisonment under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Explosive Substances Act. Besides, the Court imposed a Rs 50,000 penalty on the convict.
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“The offence was a heinous one. However, all heinous offences do not come under the rarest of rare crimes. Therefore, it did not merit capital punishment. The circumstantial and material evidence produced by the Crime Branch established the commission of a heinous crime by the convict, the Court observed while awarding life imprisonment to the convict Meher under Section 3 of the Indian Explosive Substance Act and 302 of the Indian Penal Code”, said Prosecution Counsel, Chitta Ranjan Kanungo.
Meher had pre-planned the murder as he nurtured a grudge with the groom’s mother. The deceased’s mother, Sanjukta, had taken over the charge of college principal from him, which had provoked him to hatch the wedding gift bomb plot to settle the score, the Crime Branch had earlier noted in the charge sheet submitted before the trial Court.
Driven by vendetta, he had honed the skill of bomb making to settle professional scores with Sanjukta, his colleague. The Crime Branch, which cracked the case, had found Meher as the mastermind and the executioner of the much-publicised crime.
Newly married Soumyasekhar and his grandmother were killed on February 23, 2018, when the wedding gift bomb delivered at their doorsteps by a courier service exploded. Soumyasekhar’s wife had sustained critical burn injuries following the explosion.
Meher executed the crime with meticulous dexterity and sought nobody’s help to escape detection. He browsed the internet to acquire basics on explosives and bomb making. The foundation of the murder plot was laid by him on Diwali day when he had bought fireworks. The powder from the fireworks was put to use by the accused to manufacture the parcel bomb.
For hassle-free delivery of the gift bomb, he went all alone with the explosive to Raipur in Chhattisgarh for its dispatch to Sanjukta’s house in Patnagarh. To escape detection, he avoided going to a courier service account and took the help of a driver of an auto rickshaw for its booking. An anonymous letter posted to the police to mislead the investigators proved to be his undoing, the Crime Branch probing the case had stated in the charge sheet.
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