The Kerala High Court on Friday commuted the death sentence awarded to one of the convicts in the 2014 twin murder case in Kerala’s Attingal to life imprisonment.
A division bench comprising Justice PB Suresh Kumar and Justice Johnson John converted the death sentence imposed on Nino Mathew to life imprisonment and ordered that he shall not be entitled to remission for a period of 25 years.
“So far as the first accused is concerned, his death sentence under Section 302 of the IPC is converted to imprisonment for life. It is also made clear that the first accused shall not be entitled to any remission for a period of 25 years,” the court said.
The court dismissed Anu Shanthi’s appeal and confirmed the life sentence imposed upon her by the sessions court.
The Thiruvananthapuram Principal Sessions Court, in 2016, awarded death sentence to the prime accused Nino Mathew, and life sentence to co-convict Anu Shanthi.
Nino and Anu, former Technopark employees, were found guilty of murdering Anu Shanthi’s mother-in-law Omana (60) and her three-year-old daughter Swastika after Anu’s husband Lijeesh objected to her extramarital affair with Nino. Lijeesh, however, escaped the murder attempt and sustained injuries.
In 2014, Nino Mathew, a software engineer in Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark, allegedly went to Shanthi’s house and introduced himself as Shanthi’s husband Lijeesh’s friend.
On entering the home, he stabbed Shanthi’s mother-in-law and the child to death. Lijeesh was also attacked but he escaped the attempt on his life with injuries and was able to alert the neighbours.
Within 24 hours of the incident, the state police arrested Nino, who confessed to the crime. They later arrested Shanthi as well after an extra-marital affair between her and Mathew came to light. They had planned to eliminate Lijeesh, his mother, and the infant daughter of Lijeesh and Shanthi.
The duo were charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, attempt to destroy evidence, and theft. The charge of transmitting obscene material in electronic form was also added after the police found some explicit videos of the two on Mathew’s digital devices.
The High Court had last year ordered mitigation studies to be conducted into the death sentence reference of Nino Mathew as well as a death sentence reference made with respect to Muhammed Ameer-ul-Islam who was convicted in the Dalit law student murder case.
A Bench of Justice Alexander Thomas (now retired) and Justice C Jayachandran had appointed two mitigation investigators associated with Project 39A (a criminal justice programme at National Law University, Delhi that represents death row prisoners) to assist the court in deciding whether the death penalty was warranted for the two convicts.