Woman in India handed death penalty for poisoning boyfriend
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Woman convicted for ‘barbaric and inhuman behaviour of the highest order’. A woman in India’s southern state of Kerala has been sentenced to death for killing her boyfriend by poisoning him, becoming the youngest and only second woman in the state to be handed capital punishment.
SS Greeshma, 24, was convicted of poisoning her boyfriend Sharon Raj in October 2020 by making him drink a pesticide-laced drink under the pretext of giving him a traditional medicinal concoction. Prosecutors said the drink caused Raj to suffer multiple organ failure. He died in hospital after receiving treatment for 11 days.
A sessions court in the town of Neyyattinkara said the murder charge met the “rarest of the rare” threshold required for the death sentence. Greeshma was also sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for kidnapping in order to murder and an additional five years and two years for causing harm by poison and destroying evidence respectively.
Her maternal uncle Nirmalakumaran Nair was sentenced to three years imprisonment for his role in the conspiracy while her mother, who was also investigated, was acquitted last year. Judge AM Basheer called the murder “diabolic and depraved”. “Taking into consideration all the facts and materials, it is crystal clear that the entire act of convict amounts to a barbaric and inhuman behaviour of the highest order,” the judge said in the ruling, according to The Hindu.
