Holding that the husband could not be allowed to subjugate wife only because he is physically strong, the Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence to a sex maniac from Chhattisgarh for strangling his wife to death after she refused to oblige him with cohabitation on his persistent demands.
Though the evidence against Babulal Sahu was only circumstantial, a bench of Justices H.S. Bedi and C.K. Prasad upheld his conviction for murdering his wife on the intervening night of January 3-4, 2000, saying such a person did not deserve any mercy of the law. “He had taken undue advantage of the fact that he was a male and was much stronger physically and the murder had also been committed in a revolting and cruel manner (though) it is true that refusal by the wife to have sexual relations with the husband had led to the quarrel between the spouses,” the apex court said.
The post-mortem report on the body of the wife had indicated the cause of death due to 14 serious injuries, mainly on the neck, as she was “strangulated with enormous force”.