Mumbai: The sessions court on Thursday sentenced a 24-year-old mobile shop worker to life imprisonment for the murder of bookie Jalan Khan alias Sonu Jalan’s wife Shagufta. On November 11, 2014, Arvind Gupta aka Guddu c Shagufta when he visited her residence to collect money for a phone she had bought.
As per the prosecution, Jalan’s daughters were at school that time. When they entered the house, they saw blood stains in the living room leading up to the parents’ bedroom. When the elder daughter walked towards the room, she heard someone close the door and heard a male voice.
The girls said when they started shouting for their mother, the accused opened the door, holding their mother with a knife to her throat. Realising danger, the girls rushed to their room. They claimed that when they gathered the courage to open the door, they saw Guddu leaving the house and their mother lying motionless, with her throat slit and a box of jewellery empty.
The elder daughter later called her father, who was in Australia at that time, and her aunts. The driver who had brought them back from school also rushed in and took Shagufta to hospital where she was declared dead.
The public prosecutor Ratnavali Patil, examined 25 witnesses, including Jalan’s elder daughter, a house help and the watchman of the society. The court heavily relied on the girl’s testimony and observed that “she specifically stated that the accused came outside the bedroom with a knife to her mother’s throat, with a bag in the other hand”. The court also noted that the blood-stained knife was found in the house.
