Gujarat high court

AHMEDABAD: In an intriguing murder mystery, the Gujarat high court, in an order signed on Thursday, acquitted a woman of the murder of a 90-year-old woman whom she had killed in order to make it appear as if she had committed suicide. The appellant had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court for the murder.

Five months into the investigation of the suicide, the police found the 'deceased' woman was actually alive. She confessed to having murdered the old woman to create the impression that she had committed suicide. She had staged this in order to elope with her paramour, who accidentally came in contact with her, when she dialled a wrong number. They fell in love and planned to elope.

This case involves Manisha alias Meena Khuman, a married woman and a mother of two, from Rupvati village in Jetpur taluka of Rajkot district . According to her confession, she came in contact with Jesu Mer of Manavadar over the phone, when she connected a wrong number. Love blossomed over long chats on the phone. Manisha then planned to stage her own death in a bid to start life afresh with her lover.

On June 26, 2011, Manisha hatched a plan where she strangled her nanogenarian neighbour, Jivi Mandana, who used to live alone in her house.

To mislead her family and cops, Manisha dressed Jivi's dead body in her clothes, dragged it to her own backyard and burnt Jivi's body down to ashes. Her plan worked and assuming that Manisha had committed suicide, her father lodged an FIR against her husband and in-laws for domestic violence and abetting her suicide.

Four days after the murder, a postman found that the old woman was missing.

HC: No evidence to substantiate confession

The body was burned so badly that DNA sampling was not possible, and Mandana’s disappearance remained a mystery.

On the other hand, Manisha joined Mer and they began living together at Miti village in Mendarda taluka of Junagadh district. In November 2011, Manisha attempted to see her son and got caught. Police were surprised to see her alive, while they were investigating the cause of her suicide. On interrogation, she confessed to the crime. She was charged with murder, trespassing and destruction of evidence. Police also implicated Mer in the case.

In 2015, a Jetpur court acquitted Mer and found Manisha guilty of murder on the basis of her confession and sentenced her to life imprisonment. She challenged her conviction in the high court through advocate Ruturaj Nanavati, who argued that the conviction was solely based on her extra-judicial confession before police officers. This is not admissible according to the Indian Evidence Act.

After detailed discussion on provisions of the Evidence Act, the HC said that Manisha confessed before the cops, but her revelation did not lead to any discovery and no evidence could be gathered to substantiate her confession. “…Under Section 8 of the Evidence Act, the same by itself is not sufficient to hold her guilty of a serious offence like murder in the absence of any other cogent and convincing evidence to connect her with the alleged crime,” the court said acquitting her.

