A horrifying case from 2015 seems to have finally reached its conclusion. Uttar Pradesh natives Prathiba (38) and her husband Bashdev (48) have been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Additional District Session Court 1 in Alappuzha for the murder of their six-month-old daughter, Shivani. Other than the couple, Bihar native Khanoj Prasad (33) has been sentenced to three years in prison.
A police official at the Kayamkulam police station told TNM, “The case happened three years ago, Bashdev and Prathiba lived in a rented house here in Kayamkulam near the market. The case first came to Oachira Police Station, in Kollam district. The infant’s body was found on a beach there. The post-mortem conducted there deduced that it was a murder. When they investigated, it was discovered that the incident took place here, in Kayamkulam, and the case was transferred here.”
“The Circle Inspector here at that time investigated the case and found out where it took place. We found out that it was the child of this particular couple, who had come to Kerala from Uttar Pradesh. They have other children too. We found that they had killed the baby just because she was a girl," he said.
Initially, there only circumstantial evidence tying the parents to the crime, with no eyewitnesses, but then an auto driver came forward and revealed that Pratibha and Khanoj had disposed of something that they had carried with them in the auto on that day. The infant was reportedly killed by being held by the legs and smashed against a bed.
The police officer tells us still more harrowing details about poor Shivani’s short life. “In fact, she had been abused badly before she was murdered as well. Previously, she had been taken to the Kayamkulam Government Hospital with broken arms and legs. There, the doctors were suspicious and referred to them to another medical college, but when the child was transferred there and seen by a doctor, they took the child away and disappeared. The next information we heard about this child was that she was dead.”
The couple has been in custody since that time in 2015. The third person, Khanoj, was an accomplice who helped dispose of the body. He is likely to walk free now, as he was sentenced to three years in prison, and had already spent those three years since he was imprisoned when the crime was discovered in 2015.