Bombay HC upholds death sentence of Pune man in 2012 triple murder case

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence awarded to Pune resident Vishwajeet Masalkar for murdering his mother, wife and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in 2012 over his extramarital affair with a colleague.
A division bench of Justice Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Justice Swapna Joshi upheld the 2016 judgment of the Pune sessions court that Masalkar was guilty of the triple murder and it was a "rarest of rare" case.
Masalkar's mother Shobha (50), his wife Archana and their daughter were found murdered, and their neighbour Madhusudhan Kulkarni (76) was found seriously injured at their residence in Champaratna Apartment at BT Kawade Road. Maslakar had claimed that he had found their bodies in the evening and an unidentified person had attacked his family and stolen gold jewellery and cash from his home. The police investigations and CCTV footage from a neighbouring building, however, nailed the lie.
The probe revealed that Masalkar who worked in a construction company was having an affair with a junior employee and wanted to marry her. As his family opposed the illicit affair, he murdered them.
According to the prosecution, he first attacked Archana with a hammer on her head and then strangled his daughter to death. When his mother who had gone to the market came home and confronted him, he attacked her with the hammer. Their neighbour Kulkarni who rushed to the house hearing the screams was attacked by Masalkar with the hammer but he survived. Masalkar then staged the crime scene to look like the family had been robbed. Additional public prosecutor Arfan Sait said that the evidence proved that Maslakar had killed his family.