Tag Archive for ‘Murder’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Murder'

The Shopian botch-up

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on October 4, 2009

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On May 29, 2009, two women disappeared in Shopian district of Kashmir. A day later their bodies were found. They were allegedly raped, and murdered. Muzamil Jameel looks at the shocking case in The Sunday Express:

On the evening of May 29, Neelofar, 22, and her sister-in-law Aasiya, 17, left for their apple orchard across the Rambiyar stream at Nagabal Dehgam, which their family had bought recently. Hoping to return before sundown, Neelofar didn’t take her two-year-old son Suzaine with her. But she never returned.

Neelofar’s husband Shakeel Ahangar launched a desperate search for his wife and sister but drew blank. The wife of one of the neighbours, Ghulam Qadir, had seen the girls leave the orchard but couldn’t say where they went. As the shadows grew darker, Shakeel decided to go to the local police station. A police party accompanied him and started a search across the Rambiyar stream. They looked till 2.30 in the morning before calling off the search till morning.

The following day, when the police along with Shakeel returned to the Rambiyar stream, they found Neelofar’s body. Aasiya’s body was recovered a km downstream. According to the Justice Jan Commission report-the commission was set up by the government to probe the case and was led by a retired High Court judge-the police flouted the procedure they were required to follow, right from the time the bodies were found to when they were identified.

The local police’s initial report suggested that the two women had died by drowning. They didn’t bother to collect the evidence-both circumstantial and forensic-at the spots where the bodies were found. The spots were not scanned for evidence, the clothes of the victims were not secured and, in fact, it was villagers and not the police who brought Aasiya’s body to her home in Bonpore in Shopian. More:

14 years later, godman gets life term for killing his wife

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on July 23, 2008

in Crime

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On May 28, 1991, self-proclaimed godman Shraddananda, otherwise known as Murli Manohar Mishra, drugged his wife Begum Shakereh Namazi Khaleeli, placed her in a coffin and then proceeded to bury her alive in the compound of her bungalow in Richmond Road, Bangalore.

The granddaughter of the former Dewan of Mysore, the Begum had met the ‘godman’ in Madhya Pradesh in the mid 1980s while she was still married to diplomat, Akbar Khaleeli. She was so besotted by the godman that she divorced her husband in 1986 and married Shraddananda instead.

When the Begum disappeared in 1991, her daughters from her previous marriage began asking the godman about her whereabouts. He told them she had gone abroad. Then, in 1994, her daughter Sabah filed a missing persons report that prompted an investigation that led to the discovery of the Begum’s body.

On Tuesday, July 22, the 14-year-old murder trial came to an end with the Supreme Court handing down a life sentence to Shaddananda who is now 72-years-old. The court ruled that he will remain in jail for the rest of his days. The Hindu has a report

The 14-year-long legal trial of one of the most sensational murder cases of Karnataka has come to an end with the Supreme Court on Tuesday awarding life sentence to the self-styled godman Swami Shraddananda (72), for murdering his wife Begum Shakereh Namazi Khaleeli.

The murder that was reported from Ashoknagar police station limits in central Bangalore had grabbed the attention of the public, the police and legal fraternity. According to the charge sheet filed in jurisdictional court in Bangalore by the then Inspector C. Veeraiah of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) who investigated the case, Shraddananda had drugged Shakereh, placed her body in a coffin and buried it in a corner of the compound of her palatial bungalow on Richmond Road on April 28, 1991.

[Asian Window: In an email to us, Essmath Khaleeli, Shakereh's youngest daughter clarifies that her mother "was murdered on the 28th of May, 1991."]

Don’t punish the victim

Published

asianwindow

on March 21, 2008

in Crime and Women

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In Times of India, CPM Rajya Sabha MP, Brinda Karat on the Scarlett Keeling murder being raked up in Parliament

The Scarlett Keeling case has received a great deal of attention. In Rajya Sabha, there was a sharp exchange of views on the case. A view expressed in Parliament that it was the responsibility of parents to take care of the security of their children finds resonance among some people. Indeed, the Goa government and its spokespersons have projected the case as a tragedy caused by bad parenting. They have said that if the mother had been more responsible, if the victim had been a “good girl”, then…
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Also, see previous posts:

Travel advisory

A Brazilian in Goa

Fiona MacKeown: naive, not negligent

Creaky paradise

What her mother had to see

Another family’s search for truth

Who killed Scarlett Keeling?

Justice at last for Shivani Bhatnagar

Published

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on March 19, 2008

in Crime

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Finally, a 1999 murder case gets closure. The court rules that R.K. Sharma, a suspended Inspector General of Police is guilty for the murder of Indian Express journalist Shivani Sharma. Tushar Srivastava in the Hindustan Times on how the former top cop’s defense collapsed.

The Shivani Bhatnagar murder case was as big a challenge for the media covering the case as it was for the cops. Both had one from their fraternity involved in it.

Shivani was a Principal Correspondent with the Indian Express. Ravi Kant Sharma was a 1976 batch IPS officer. The case was a potent mix of intrigue, deception, lies and having an investigative journalist and an IPS officer in its lead roles.

The case hit the headlines once again when in July 2002, the Delhi Police crime branch cracked the case and made the first arrest. What followed was a cat and mouse game between the cops and Sharma who were on his trail.

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And, on the low conviction rates in high profile crime cases because witnesses turn hostile, India enews has a report

More and more criminal cases in recent times have seen witnesses turning hostile. In the trial relating to the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar in New Delhi nine years ago, of the 209 witnesses examined 51 turned hostile.

The prosecution had initially submitted to the court a list of 250 witnesses but during the course of the hearings over the past nine years it dropped 41 witnesses. ‘This has become a trend now. Witnesses, especially in high-profile cases, turn silent when they appear in court for their final statements,’ said advocate K.K. Sood, a lawyer specialising in criminal cases.

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I was naive but I wasn’t negligent, says Scarlett Keeling’s mother Fiona MacKeown

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on March 16, 2008

in Crime

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In The Sunday Times, UK, Dean Nelson meets Fiona MacKeown:

It is hard to classify MacKeown. Her children’s names – including Merlin, Kisangel, Isis Celeste and Trinity Willow – suggest mellow hippiedom. But she defines herself as a gypsy; when she sought planning permission to put caravans on her land she was backed by the Romany council. She is unconventional but when she says she was naive rather than negligent, I believe her. Those who have seen her with her children were struck by how bright, well mannered and affectionate they are.

With her brood of children, MacKeown would receive about £25,000 a year in benefits. In order to pay for the Goan holiday she told me she had saved £200 a week for months by living frugally – buying only rice to supplement the family’s home-grown vegetables and buying clothes for the children only from charity shops. Eventually they had about £7,000 for the trip, topped up by selling a pony for £1,000. It was a tiny budget for a six-month holiday once the flights for nine had been paid for.

Murder and mourning in Baton Rouge

Published

asianwindow

on February 18, 2008

in Crime

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Via sajaforum.org: Long after the media lights have dimmed, Anish Majumdar of Little India, an Indian publication in the United States, visits the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge where two Indian PhD students were murdered in December, 2007.

In the laundromat of Lousiana State University’s Edward Gay Apartments complex in Baton Rouge is a small stool on which sits a simple clay pot. The sole flower in the potted plant has already wilted. Tacked to the wall above it is a rudimentary paper sign pasted over aluminum foil, a valiant effort no doubt to create the effect of a plaque – of sorts.

It reads simply, “In Memory of: Kiran and Komma.” The modest memorial is the sole visible reminder of a gruesome double homicide in the building that had attracted national media attention just one month earlier.

On Dec. 13, 2007, the last day of final exams, two suspects broke into the family housing complex, Edward Gay Apartments on campus and brutally murdered two doctoral students from Andhra Pradesh, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam.

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