5 of family get 7 years’ jail for woman’s death

Additional district and sessions judge Tarsem Mangla on Thursday awarded seven years in jail to five members of a family after holding them guilty of culpable homicide of a woman.

The court also also imposed a fine of Rs 3,500 on each convict — Manohar Singh, Bikramjit Singh, Kulwant Singh, Amarjeet Kaur and Bhupinder Kaur, all residents of Lalru in Dera Bassi.

It was on 17 February, 2007, when the five went to the house of their relatives, Jarnail Singh and his wife Gurdev Kaur. There they had an altercation with the husband-wife duo over a family dispute, and assaulted them with rods and logs.

Having sustained serious head injuries, Gurdev succumbed during treatment.

Following the complaint of Jarnail, the police had registered a case under section 302 (murder), 342 (wrongful confinement), 352 (trespassing), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and arrested the accused soon after.

However, during the trial, the section of murder was amended into culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and trespassing charges were removed.