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A 39-year-old engineer was sentenced to life imprisonment Thursday by a trial court in Multai for killing his wife and two daughters — age nine and two years — by setting them on fire in March last year.
Praveen Manwar, an IIT alumnus who worked with the NTPC, had claimed that he had entered into a suicide pact with his wife and set fire to the car in which the family was travelling. However, he could not muster courage to end his life and came out of the car at the last minute, Manwar had said after surrendering to the police.
During the trial, he stuck to his version that he had entered into a suicide pact with his wife as he was HIV positive and could have passed the virus to his wife Shilpa, also an engineer.
He said that he used to frequent prostitutes and had developed symptoms that matched with those of HIV positive people, about whom he read online. “I considered Google my doctor. I don’t know why people are finding it difficult to accept my story. My only remorse is that I failed to end my life,” he had told The Indian Express when he was in police custody.
Sessions judge M P Tiwari handed him another five years in jail for destroying evidence. However, he did not award death sentence to Manwar as sought by the prosecution.
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District Prosecution Officer Atul Sharma said he would appeal against the verdict in the High Court and seek capital punishment because Manwar had killed his wife and children in cold blood. Moreover, he said, medical tests showed that Manwar was not HIV positive.
According to the prosecution, Manwar travelled to Mumbai and other places after committing the crime and had sought legal counsel before surrendering to the police.
Shilpa’s brother, Ajay Dhanke, said the family members were not happy with the court’s verdict and want death sentence for Manwar.
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