HC acquits man accused of killing 2 daughters

After the couple separated, the two younger daughters Almas and Rubanna lived with their mother Tanuja in Chinchwad, Kolhapur, while the older children Muskan and Bismilla continued to live with Faras, as they attended school near his home in Borgaon.

On August 20, 2007, according to the prosecution, Faras went to his daughters’ school around 12.20 pm and told their teachers that he was taking Muskan and Bismilla to a hospital in Ichalkaranji for a medical check-up.

On the same day, Tanuja too went to the school to meet her daughters, but was allegedly told that their father had taken them away. The same evening, around 5 pm, Faras met Tanuja at his sister Rukhsana’s house and the two had an altercation. He allegedly said he wanted to kill his other two daughters too, like he had killed Muskan and Bismilla by drowning them in the Panchganga river.

On August 22, 2007, the bodies of Muskan and Bismilla were found on the Panchganga river bed. Post-mortem reports ascertained that they had died of asphyxia by drowning.

Faras’s lawyer Arfan Sait, however, pointed out to the court that witness statements, including that of Tanuja, did not corroborate the prosecution’s case that the couple had separated only because of Faras’s contempt for his daughters. The court also noted that there was no account of anyone who had seen Faras taking his daughters out of the school.

Acquitting Faras, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court in July 2010, the court observed: “Nothing is brought on record that can establish the distance between the school where the deceased girls were studying and the Panchganga river as in the absence of the said evidence, even possibility of the girls, on their own, going there and accidentally falling into the river also cannot be ruled out.”