Mumbai: A sessions court has sentenced a 39-year-old man to eight years rigorous imprisonment for stabbing his wife with a kitchen knife for eating curd.
Additional Sessions Judge Sanjashree J. Gharat, while deciding the quantum of sentence, said in her judgment that the offence proved against Sachin Malore is serious in nature. While showing leniency to the accused, the sufferings of the victim cannot be ignored, the judge stated.
“The accused stabbed his own wife on petty ground,” the court said, but considered that the incident took place in a rage of anger and spur of moment and was not premeditated. The court also considered that he has no criminal antecedents and had been in custody after his arrest in 2017 for three years.
During the trial, his wife Ranjana Malore with whom he has two daughters, had deposed before the court how her husband, an alcoholic, would pick quarrels and beat her over trivial issues. On September 9, 2017, the family had returned from their native of Mangaon after attending her sister-in-law’s last rites.
Ranjana’s mother had packed her some curd, which she was eating, when her husband picked a fight with her over eating it and stabbed her with a kitchen knife. She raised an alarm and her landlord’s son-in-law, who lived above, came to her rescue. Her husband fled. She then made a phone call with the help of the man to her elder sister who resides nearby. Her sister then covered her stomach with a towel and took her to Sion hospital. The hospital informed the police and a complaint was lodged.
During the trial, her landlord’s son-in-law had appeared as an eye-witness and told the court that when he arrived at the scene, Malore had already stabbed his wife and was about to do so again. Her sister also testified. A doctor who treated Ranjana during her stay at the hospital for over two weeks, told the court that the injury was so grievous that it could have caused death.
Her husband had taken the defence that he was falsely implicated and that she had sustained the injury by falling on a steel rack.
