A mother is supposed to be a life giver, but a 40-year-old woman has landed herself in jail for life after gagging and fatally stabbing her six-year-old son 20 times following his refusal to take bath.
Bathinda District and Sessions Judge Kamaljit Lamba slapped the sentence even as the victim’s father and grandparents turned hostile and the prosecution failed to bring on record the motive behind the crime.
Case :
- The victim, Harkirat Singh, was a student of Class I at Lord Rama Public School, Punjab
- Rajbir Kaur of Mati Dass Nagar in Bhathinda had stabbed her six-year-old son to death while giving him a bath on July 1, 2018
- The first standard student’s father told him to get ready for a fun-filled outing on the fateful day, however, the mother turned furious following his reluctance to take a bath
- The prosecution claimed she lost her cool when her son started to cry and stuffed a piece of cloth in his mouth to prevent him from creating a noise
- She then stabbed him with a dagger multiple times before she got exhausted and stopped and walked out of the bathroom and informed the family
- Soon after the incident, the woman was arrested and the police had also seized the murder weapon, a knife
- According to the police, the accused mother was well educated, held MA and BEd degrees and had a good reputation in the locality
- The accused, Rajbir Kaur, was booked in July last year for murder under Section 302 of the IPC
When the incident took place, the father, Parminder Singh, and his entire family were present in the house. Singh told the police that the family was in a state of shock. He then quoted,
We are clueless as to how it happened. We did hear Harkirat’s cries from the washroom, but we thought that he might not be willing to take a bath. Later, he fell silent. Rajbir was a doting mother. She was particular in giving Harkirat medicines on time, as he suffered from an allergy.
Judge Lamba asserted the testimony of witnesses turning hostile could not be treated as effaced or washed off the record altogether and evidence regarding the existence of a motive operating in the mind of the accused was often limited and, perhaps, known only to accused and to no other.
Attributing the crime to stress of modern day life, he said:
Patience is one of the attributes of god and it is powerful enough to conquer the devil. But the stress and strains of the modern day life has driven persons crazy, who tend to lose temper at the drop of a hat. If the accused had little patience, she could have avoided the incident.
He added that a man often prays for the birth of a son. But in the case in hand, convict Rajbir Kaur put an end to her own son’s life. Judge Lamba said prompt lodging of FIR coupled with the fact that the accused was arrested from the spot conclusively established her involvement in the crime. The Judge directed the launch of prosecution against hostile witnesses. He added that it was necessary and in the interest of justice that the witnesses, who turned hostile, be now tried summarily for giving false evidence.
However, the court refused to order capital punishment, stating the case might be a rare incident, but could not be considered as rarest of the rare.
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