HYDERABAD: Nearly seven years after the sensational honour killing of Pranay Kumar, a dalit, in Miryalaguda in Sept 2018, a court in Nalgonda on Monday sentenced seven people – one to death and six others to life.
Pranay was hacked to death outside a hospital in Miryalaguda in front of his five-month pregnant wife Amrutha Varshini and his mother by killers hired by the upper caste family of his wife opposed to their inter-caste marriage. They had been married for seven months and both were 23 years old at the time of the murder.
Terming the case as ‘rarest of rare' in her 523-page verdict, N Roja Ramani, special sessions judge for SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act cases, awarded death sentence to prime accused Shubash Kumar Sharma, observing it was ‘cold blooded and premeditated' murder. He was also fined Rs 15,000.
The others – Asgar Ali, Abbas Bari, Abdul Karim, T Sravan (Amrutha's uncle), S Siva and MA Nizam – were given life sentences.
Special prosecutor Darshanam Narsimha said it is the first honour killing case in Telangana where capital punishment has been awarded to prime accused and life terms to others.
As per police probe, Amrutha's father T Maruthi Rao, a well-known businessman in Miryalaguda (about 145 km from Hyderabad) had engaged hired assailants through Asgar Ali to eliminate Pranay. Ali, an alleged terror suspect who was earlier acquitted in former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya's killing, had given the contract to prime accused Sharma.
The CCTV camera outside Jyoti Hospital had captured Sharma following the three as they walked out of the hospital premises, with the machete in hand, and later attacking Pranay while his wife and mother Premalatha screamed for help.
Maruthi Rao was also an accused, but his name was later dropped after he ended his life in a Vaishya community guest house in Hyderabad in 2020. He had left behind a suicide note apologising to Amrutha and asking her to stay with her mother. Amrutha, however, continues to live with her in-laws along with her son.
"We managed to get a conviction because of strong technical evidence, including CCTV footage," Nalgonda SP Sharat Chandra Pawar said.
Welcoming Monday's verdict, Pranay's father Perumalla Balaswamy said he was relieved justice was delivered after so many years. Balaswamy along with his family and friends also visited Pranay's grave in Miryalaguda later in the day where he broke down while paying tribute.
"It was wrong to kill my son. The accused tried to influence us, but we did not pay any heed to that as we wanted justice. Though the judicial process took time, we invested our trust in the prosecution. The then Nalgonda SP, A V Ranganath, also pushed the case proactively," Balaswamy said.
