Girl's testimony sends mom behind bars

Five years later, however, a local court in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad district, about 125 km from here, believed Neha’s story and sentenced the killer wife, her father and another relative to life imprisonment.

“My mother, nana (maternal grandfather) and another relative first served my father food and liquor and thereafter they killed him,” Neha told the court. She told the court that her father was killed because he had refused to give them money.

According to the prosecution, Santosh Singh, a resident of Khemapur Nidhiyawan village in the district, was found hanging from the ceiling in his house in May 2005. While Singh’s wife Shashibala claimed that he had committed suicide, the police investigation found discrepancies in her statement.

The investigations revealed that Santosh’s mother had a substantial amount in her fixed deposit account and Shashibala and her father were pressuring Santosh to hand over the money to them.

When Santosh refused to give them the money, the duo hatched a conspiracy to kill him. On the fateful day, Santosh was served a sumptuous meal and liquor. He was then strangled to death. The killers did not notice that Neha, who was only eight-year-old then, was watching everything.