Mumbai: Neighbour gets life sentence for murder of woman, grandchild

The prosecutor, Mangesh Arote, had submitted before the court that due to the brutality shown by the accused, he should be sentenced to death.

A sessions court Tuesday sentenced a 29-year-old man to life imprisonment for the murder of a 50-year-old woman and her three-and-half-year-old granddaughter in Sion in 2011. The accused, Vishal Srivastava, a neighbour of the victims, was convicted by the court on April 12 for murder, house-trespass and robbery, among other charges.
The prosecutor, Mangesh Arote, had submitted before the court that due to the brutality shown by the accused, he should be sentenced to death.

Srivastava’s lawyers had sought leniency, stating that the case was based on circumstantial evidence and did not fall into the rarest of rare category. Additional sessions judge Salman Azmi sentenced Srivastava to life imprisonment.
On June 3, 2011, Sion-resident Sheetal Raikar returned from work but got no response from her mother, Ranjana, who had locked the door of the house from inside. When she asked a relative to climb on a ladder and look into into house, he saw Sheetal’s daughter, Vaishnavi, lying in a pool of blood.

On breaking open the door, they also found Ranjana’s body with a pillow on her face. A case of murder was registered at Antop Hill police station. Sheetal and her husband Santosh told police that jewellery worth Rs 3 lakh was missing from their home. Police questioned many including Srivastava, their neighbour, who knew the victims well. Police suspected Srivastava’s role as he kept giving evasive answers and tried to mislead the probe by claiming that Santosh had committed the crime.