Man who torched wife gets 5 years as kid testifies in court

MUMBAI: The testimony of a 10-year-old eyewitness has helped nail his 36-year-old father for the 2014 death of his mother. A sessions

court

on Thursday convicted and sentenced the man to five years under charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The Sion-based accused, Irfan Shaikh, had poured kerosene over his wife, Meena, and set her ablaze as she refused to sleep on the floor and instead wanted to sleep on the cot.

The accused tried to pass off the death as an accident due to a stove blast.

The accused has also been found guilty of cruelty under the Domestic Violence Act.

The prosecution submitted that Meena had married

Irfan

in 2005. The incident took place on June 15, 2014. The prosecution said that the accused used to abuse Meena and constantly demanded money.

In court, the couple's son said they quarrelled often and his mother was abused by the father. The child said that on the night of the incident, his mother was massaging his father's legs while the father was sleeping on the cot.

The child said that his father asked his mother to sleep on the floor, but she refused.

The boy said that his father and began to hit her. He said his father then poured kerosene on his mother and set her on fire and ran away. He deposed that his mother also ran behind him and so his father's hands were burnt. The woman died two days later.

The court while holding the accused guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder reasoned that there is no evidence of the intention to murder the wife. "But he had knowledge that the act it is so immensely dangerous that it must in all probability cause death or such bodily injury as is likely to cause death...," the court held.