Chhattisgarh High Court upholds life sentence in Raipur double murder case
Convict found guilty of killing woman and minor daughte
Bilaspur | Correspondent: The Chhattisgarh High Court has dismissed the appeal filed by a 22-year-old man convicted of the brutal murder of a woman and her innocent daughter in the state capital, Raipur. Upholding the life sentence handed down by the lower court, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agarwal observed that the prosecution had been entirely successful in establishing the chain of events linked to the incident.
The case dates back to January 2021, when the accused, identified as Vicky, alias Sukhiram Yadav, murdered Roma Yadav and her minor daughter, Mahira. According to the prosecution, Roma had previously filed a rape case against Vicky; following his release from jail on bail in that matter, the accused faced pressure to either marry her or face legal repercussions.
Driven by this animosity, on January 22, 2021, the accused murdered Roma by slitting her throat with a knife near Jaura Maidan. He then abandoned her innocent daughter near a railway track, where the child subsequently died after being struck by a train.
In its verdict, the court stated that the accused's confession of the crime before a former Sarpanch (village head), the recovery of the blood-stained weapon, and scientific evidence such as FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) and DNA reports constituted irrefutable proof against the convict.
The defense counsel presented arguments citing emotional distress and circumstantial evidence; however, the court rejected these contentions, taking into account the sheer brutality of the crime and the premeditated nature of the conspiracy. It is noteworthy that the accused had already been separately convicted in December 2024 under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act in connection with this very case. The convict, Vicky, will now have to spend the remainder of his life behind bars.
