Delhi: Man gets life term for murder, rape of 81-year-old employer

A Delhi court has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for raping and killing an 81-year-old woman at her residence in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash II.

Neeraj Saifi was awarded life imprisonment under section 302 of IPC for murder, 10 years of imprisonment under section 376 of IPC for rape and 3 years under section 201 of IPC for ‘causing disappearance of evidence of offence’. He will have to serve the maximum punishment meted out to him, which is life imprisonment.

The woman, widow of a senior journalist, was found dead in her house on July 8, 2014. She had been living alone after her husband died in 2005.

Additional sessions judge Sanjiv Jain pronounced the verdict after the prosecution cited circumstantial evidence, testimonies of witnesses, postmortem report and other medical reports to prove that Saifi was the culprit. The court hearing also held the domestic help Neeraj guilty of destruction of evidence.

The woman was beaten up, raped and strangled with a dupatta before being set on fire by her domestic help Saifi. Her body was found on the second floor of the four-storey apartment in Greater Kailash II.

Neeraj had been employed for seven months. He was arrested soon after the incident.

The witnesses included the woman’s family members, neighbours, servants and security guards. During the trial, police said that Saifi had admitted to committing the crime during interrogation.

Delhi Police filed the chargesheet in September 2014 against Saifi. The trial began on November 8 but due to delay in forensic reports it stopped for a while.

During the trial it was found that Saifi’s plan was to prove that the woman had died in a fire.

During the investigation, police had first thought that the fire in the house started due to an air-condition malfunction. But it was later found that the outdoor unit of the split AC was intact and there couldn’t have been a blast. This helped police reach the conclusion that the fire was deliberate to kill the woman.

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