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Army doctor gets life imprisonment for chopping wife's body into 200 pieces in Bhubaneswar

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Express News Service    26 February 2020

On Tuesday, a retired Army doctor was given life imprisonment by the session’s court in Bhubaneswar. Somnath Parida, who had retired as colonel with the Indian Army, had murdered his wife and stuffed the parts of her body in tiffin boxes after chopping them into 200 pieces seven years ago. He was given this life sentence by Khurda District and Sessions Judge Loknath Mohapatra.

Parida was found guilty under Section 302 under the Indian Penal Code for murdering his wife Ushashree and Section 201 for vanishing of evidence. The court has also levied a fine of Rs 50,000 on him.

Public Prosecutor Sarada Chandra Samanta told TNIE that 24 witnesses and 28 documents were inspected during the trial which had started in 2014. Parida had reportedly broke down in the courtroom after hearing the verdict.

The Army doctor was apparently annoyed with his daughter who had refused to give him money and was supposedly furious after Ushashree called her to visit them. The couples daughter and son who are staying in Middle East, 2 brothers and a nephew of the victim, 2 doctors, 3 policemen, 2 locals and others were inspected during the trial.

Parida was arrested on June 21, 2013, by Bhubaneswar Police from his IRC Village residence. The police were shocked to find 200 pieces of Ushashree’s body packed in 20-odd tiffin boxes that took him several days to pack and he had used phenyl to oppress the stink.

The incident was exposed when the victim’s brother Ranjan Samal got suspicious as his sister did not respond to calls from her son for many days. So he visited the house but Parida would not allow him in. The same evening, Ranjan tried to sneak in with other relatives and noticed stink coming from the house so he alerted the police.

Samanta said that Parida was avoiding his sons requests for letting him speak to his mother by false statements, which made him doubtful and he insisted his uncle to visit their home. Also, Parida did not allow the domestic help to come in and avoided contact with his relatives too.

During cross-examination, he said that his wife had committed suicide and wanted the final rites to be done at Shirdi, therefore he chopped them into pieces for convenience of transportation. Parida was repeatedly changing his statements during the hearing. The case was difficult for the police as there were no eye witnesses.

But, circumstantial and forensic evidence favored the trial as the investigation exposed that Parida used a blunt object to hit his wife as there was a deep injury to the skull.

Source: The New Indian Express

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