Disposing of a murder case of an 18-year-old girl inside her residence in 2006, a court here on Monday sentenced a 40-year-old man to rigourous imprisonment for life for committing the brutal crime.
The district additional sessions court (II) judge, G. Gopakumar, while pronouncing the sentence on the covict B.M. Ummer Byari, a native of Bantwal, near Mangaluru, also slapped a fine of Rs.50,000 for murdering Fathimath Suhara of Uluvar, near Kumbla.
The court on Thursday had found him guilty of murdering the girl, who used to deliver food to the man while he was working as a casual labourer in a mosque at Uluvar.
The court was told that the man eventually developed intimacy with Suhra.
When the girl spurned his advances, Byari decided to finish her off, the prosecution said.
Suhara was found murdered with her throat slit in her residence around 2.30 a.m. on December 28.
Police said the frustrated man barged into the house by removing the roof tiles after climbing on a coconut palm adjacent to the building.
The man, who continued to remain in the locality and visited the house like other locals to mourn the death, was eventually trapped by a police team led by then Kumbla Circle Inspector T.P. Ranjith.
27 witnesses
During the course of the trial, 27 witnesses, including Suhara’s mother Nafeesa, sister Avamma, social worker Yusuf Uluvar, and mosque official Moosa Musliyar were examined.
Special prosecutor C.N. Ibrahim sought death penalty for the convict and pleaded the court to regard the case as the “rarest of the rare.”
Byari pleaded for lighter sentence, arguing that he was the lone breadwinner of his family.
