A Kerala court on Monday sentenced a 24-year-old woman to death for murdering her boyfriend in 2022, making her the youngest in the state to be awarded capital punishment.
The additional sessions court upheld the prosecution’s argument that S.S. Greeshma, a postgraduate in English literature, had exhibitedrare cruelty and heartlessness by killing 24-year-old radiology student Sharon Rajwhile they were in a relationship.
Greeshma faced multiple charges under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 364 (abduction with intent to commitmurder), 328 (administering poison with intent to harm life) and 203 (obstruction of justice by providing false information).
The court, which also imposed a fine of ₹2 lakh on Greeshma, observed that she had meticulously planned the murder to end her relationship with Sharon after getting engaged to another man.
Additional sessions judge A.M. Basheer, who termed it a “rarest of rare case”, had on Friday convicted Greeshma while acquitting her mother Sindhu for lack of evidence. Greeshma’s uncle Nirmalakumaran Nair, the third accused, was sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment for being an accomplice and destroying evidence.
In the 586-page judgment, Basheer said Greeshma did not realise that she had been carrying the evidence with her ever since she poisoned Sharon with a pesticide-laced ayurvedic tonic.
“God in the cloud saved the data of crime. Based on the principle of Dr Edmond Locard (French criminologist and also a pioneer in forensic science) that one cannot leave the place of crime without leaving a trace of evidence, the accused left a large amount of evidence in the cloud. Even when Sharon was battling for his life in the ICU for 11 days, he continued to love her and did not want her to be punished. Greeshma betrayed Sharon’s trust. Her actions suggest that this was a premeditated murder which saw him dying of internal organ failure,” the court observed.
According to the prosecution, Greeshma lured Sharon to her house on October 14, 2022, where she gave him an ayurvedic tonic laced with paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide. After battling for his life for 11 days, Sharon succumbed to multiple organ failure on October 25.
The doctors and police had urged Greeshma to reveal the name of the herbicide to give an antidote to Sharon but to no avail. The court attributed Greeshma’s action to a “cruel mindset”.
The prosecution argued that Greeshma decided to murder Sharon as he had refused to end their relationship after her family fixed her marriage elsewhere. Greeshma’s resolve to kill Sharon became stronger after a previous attempt failed.
Greeshma showed no remorse when the additional sessions judge pronouncedthe death sentence. Before reading out the judgment, the judge invited Sharon’s parents, Jayaraj and Priya, andhis brother, Shimon, to his chamber.
“Justice is served. My dear son got justice,” Priya said tearfully.
Greeshma is the second woman to get the death sentence in Kerala. The first woman was Rafeeqa Beevi, who was convicted of the murder of Santhakumari in Thiruvananthapuram’s Vizhinjam Mulloor,for gold.
It was Judge Basheer who had pronounced Rafeeqa’s death sentence.
The court also congratulated the police for their meticulous investigation led by former Thiruvananthapuram superintendent of police (rural) D. Shilpa.