Bankura (West Bengal): A court here Wednesday sentenced a man to life imprisonment for the murder of his woman friend. The man had befriended the woman on a social media site. Then the man had lured her to Madhya Pradesh from her home. He did it on the false promise of getting her a job in the USA. After murdering the woman he put her body in a trunk. Then he entombed it in the compound of his house in Bhopal.
Fast Track Court, Bankura, Judge Suresh Biswakarma, pronounced Udayan Das guilty of murdering Akanksha Sharma (28), Tuesday. Then he sentenced him to life term in prison Wednesday.
Chief public prosecutor Arun Chattopadhyay prayed for death sentence to Das. He claimed it was a heinous crime and rarest of rare in nature.
Abhishek Biswas, the lawyer representing Das, said that an appeal will be moved before a higher court challenging the conviction. Das looked remorseless after he was pronounced guilty. “I will move higher courts, challenging this judgement,” he told reporters while leaving court.
The prosecution had submitted before the court during trial that Sharma had left her parental house June 23, 2016. She had informed her parents that she was going to the USA for a job in an international aid agency.
On reaching the residence of Das at Saketnagar in Bhopal, the woman realised that she had been duped by Das. This led to a huge argument between the two. The prosecution submitted that July 15, 2016, Das strangled Sharma to death. Then he entombed her body in a platform in the compound of his house.
It told the court that following the murder, Das used Sharma’s mobile and sent messages to her family impersonating her. She ‘claimed’ that she was working in the USA, but could not talk to them over phone. This is because she was yet to get a SIM card in the USA.
Das even had the audacity to visit Sharma’s family in Bankura in October, 2016.
However, Sharma’s family suspected that something was amiss when they failed to talk to her for several months. Family members lodged a missing diary at Bankura Sadar police station.
The police launched a probe and found that Sharma’s last phone location was in Bhopal. Then Sharma’s father and brother went to the Madhya Pradesh capital, but could not find her.
Then Shivendra Narayan Sharma, the woman’s father, lodged a case of kidnapping against Das January 5, 2017. After that Bankura police personnel went to Bhopal and arrested him February 1, 2017.
Das confessed to his crime during questioning and Sharma’s remains were recovered from a trunk under the tomb. He is also accused of murdering his parents in Raipur. He allegedly buried their bodies in the compound of their house there after killing them. That case is still on.