The Calcutta High Court has converted the death sentence of his parents into life imprisonment in the case of murder of a one-year-old child. The convict has converted the death sentence to the couple of Andhra Pradesh to life imprisonment for at least 40 years without any exemption. The couple has been convicted that he used to assault the child and one day the child died due to the medicine given to him in fever.

The court said that the appellant S.K. Hasina Sultana and S.K. The objections raised by Vannur Sha with the jurisdiction of the court at Howrah in West Bengal are baseless. The court admitted that this is not the rarest case. The bench said that given the facts and circumstances of the case, we are not in a position to reach the conclusion that any other punishment other than the death penalty will be insufficient.

A bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Mohammad Shabbar Rashidi said, “Keeping in mind all the facts and circumstances in the case, we are in favor of converting the death penalty sentence to the appellants into life imprisonment.” The bench said that keeping in mind the age and other circumstances of the appellants, life imprisonment would mean life imprisonment for 40 years without any exemption from the date of their arrest.

The court was told that the appellants killed the child in Secunderabad, Telangana and packed the body in a bag and kept it in the Falakanuma Express to Howrah in January 2016. On 24 January 2016, the police recovered a bag full of body of the child from the train at Howrah railway station, on which there were bruises. A case of murder was registered in connection with this incident.

The fast track court of Howrah convicted Dapanti on 27 February 2024. The High Court also maintained the conviction. The bench said, “The Hon’ble Supreme Court has determined in its various decisions that the support of the death penalty should be taken under extraordinary circumstances, where the sentence court can conclude that the matter falls in the category of extremely rare cases and the possibility of improving the convict has ended.”

The court was told that Hasina went missing from the house on 22 December 2015, after which her mother lodged a complaint and a lookout notice was issued in the name of Hasina and her child from Tenali-1 Town Police Station in Andhra Pradesh. Later, the investigating officer of the West Bengal Police arrested Hasina from her mother’s house and on interrogation, she revealed that she had married Vannur Sha and stays with her in a rented house in Hyderabad.

The prosecution said in the lower court that the child was born out of a extramarital affair between Hasina and another person, but after the relationship came to an end, she was living with her mother. It was claimed that Hasina also revealed that the child used to cry, which her landlords in Hyderabad protested.

The prosecution said that for this reason, both the appellants used to beat the child. He told that one day the child had a fever, for which he was given some medicine after assault. The prosecution said that the child died due to such assault and medicine. Subsequently, Vannur Sha packed the body in a bag and left it in the general compartment of Falaknuma Express, the prosecution presented in the lower court.