Odisha lecturer gets life sentence for killing 2 with parcel bomb 'wedding gift'

Bhubaneswar: A lecturer was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Odisha's Bolangir district on Wednesday for killing two persons, including a groom, by sending a parcel bomb as a wedding gift.

Punjilal Meher, a lecturer at Jyoti Vikas College in Bhainsa, had a professional enmity with the groom's mother at the college where she worked as the principal. Due to this reason, Punjilal hatched the conspiracy to kill her son Soumya and sent the bomb as a wedding gift in 2018, the police said.

The Patnagarh Additional District Judge (ADJ) court has convicted the accused Punjilal Meher in the case and sentenced him to life imprisonment, government counsel Chittaranjan Kanungo said.

The court convicted him under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 201 (destroy evidence of a crime) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, he said.

The court sentenced life imprisonment under two sections, 10 years of imprisonment under two charges and seven years imprisonment under another charge. Kanungo said that all the sentences would run concurrently.

"Our submission was to treat it as a rarest of rare cases. However, the court did not observe it as a rarest of rare cases because all heinous crime cases cannot be treated like that," the public prosecutor said.

He said the quantum of punishment pronounced by the court is very encouraging. It will give a positive message to the society at large.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1.70 lakh on the convict. He will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, Kanungo informed media persons outside the court.

Soumya Sekhar, a man in his mid-twenties, and his 85-year-old grandmother were killed in the blast. His wife, Seema Sahoo, suffered critical injuries when a parcel bomb, disguised as a wedding gift, exploded at their Patnagarh home in Bolangir district on February 23, 2018.

The blast had taken place when the groom opened the gift.

Following a request by the new bride and her family, the then chief minister Naveen Patnaik had ordered the Crime Branch to probe into the incident.

The Crime Branch took over the investigation on March 23, 2018, and arrested Meher in April 2018. He is currently lodged in the Patnagarh sub-jail.

The Crime Branch, in its charge sheet, has accused Punjilal Meher an English lecturer at the college where the victim Soumya Sekhar’s mother Sanjukta Sahu was the principal.

The investigating agency has said that revenge was the motive behind the crime.