New Delhi:
A Delhi court sentenced a 25-year-old man to death for mercilessly killing his father and chopping of his body into parts as a sacrifice to a deity in 2008 in the belief that it would ward off his troubles with his wife.
Additional Sessions Judge R K Gauba awarded capital punishment to Nabi Karim resident Jitender, terming his crime as the "rarest of the rare" warranting nothing less than the gallows.
"The brutal murder of the father followed by the mutilation of his body, all in the name of human sacrifice, to appease the deity for his own welfare, adds a grave dimension to this case and leaves no scope for escape from the conclusion that it is a case falling in the category of rarest of rare, meriting the extreme penalty," the court said.
The court held Jitender guilty of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on him.
The court allowed the contentions of Public Prosecutor R K Tanwar, who submitted that this case of murder involving human sacrifice, was extremely barbaric and heinous. Defence counsel Y D Sharma argued that the convict was just 25-year-old and had no criminal record and deserves to be treated sympathetically so that he could be reformed.
According to the prosecution, Jitender bought a knife on March 12, 2008 and killed his father the next day in order to appease the deity.
He said that he had a dream in which the deity asked him for a human sacrifice to ward off his troubles with his wife.
The court said, "The manner in which the convict butchered his father and hacked off his head and organs for no conceivable fault of the victim is figuratively speaking, the gravest case of breach of trust."