The Thane Sessions court acquitted the employee of Oberoi International School and her alleged lover, who were arrested by the Thane police in 2019, for allegedly killing her husband by spiking his tea with sleeping pills. The court held the case was not a direct evidence case, but a case of circumstantial evidence, and the prosecution had failed to prove the same beyond reasonable doubt. The court also held that the very basic ground, which the prosecution had used, the love affair, was not proved by the prosecution.
As per the prosecution’s case, Dipti Patankar and Samadhan Pashankar were allegedly having an affair and this was the prime reason, that the duo were allegedly planning the murder of Pramod Patankar.
The police in their complaint claimed that Dipti had spiked deceased Pramod’s tea with 20 sleeping pills, which made him fell unconscious and then Samadhan, who also happens to be the deceased’s cousin, came to his house, smothered his face and later strangulated using a rope around his neck. The Navghar police had arrested them for the ‘crime’.
The prosecution had examined several witnesses in the case but failed to examine Dipti’s father, who, according to the police had called them and informed about the murder. They failed to examine Dipti’s daughter too.
The defence counsel informed the court that the police had wrongly implicated his client in the case. The entire case was concocted. “The forensic report’s of the deceased are silent on the point of strangulation, but it reads that the death was due to smothering. The prosecution has failed to prove that the CCTV footage of the hotel, where the police claimed of the duo visiting them regularly. Even the hotel manager has refused to identify the accused in the case. Further, the police have also failed to produce the CDR of the accused as well as the WhatsApp chats, to prove that Dipti had called Samadhan to her house after Pramod fell unconscious,” the defence arguments said.
The defence also pointed out that the panch witness who is examined in the case, himself has criminal antecedents in several cases, thus doubting his character to testify against the accused.
Advocate Amin Solkar, Defence for Dipti, said, “This case shows how the police can go to any extent to frame a wife for the death of her husband at home while she was attending to her job in a school. This was a case of circumstantial evidence as there were no eye witnesses. After five years of incarceration, finally, justice has been done.”
