New Delhi: In a case of major family tragedy that left three out of four members dead, the 36-year-old mother, who is the only survivor, has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for killing her own minor kids and later attempting to commit suicide.
The court noted that the woman was being treated for severe depressive episode but said there was no evidence to prove that she committed the crime in a mentally unstable condition.
"All the defence witnesses deposed about her mental condition from the date she was admitted in Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) but there is no record to establish that she was mentally unstable at the time of occurrence. Thus, the defence evidence led by the accused is of no help to her," it said while convicting her.
Back in 2010, when Sonali Sachdev discovered that her husband, Pamod, has ended his life, she tried to end her own with of her children as well. Pramod was worried about the admission of their daughter in school.
Police, after receiving a call that somebody had committed suicide, reached Sonali's Tilak Nagar house in west Delhi and found her husband Pramod and two children dead and the woman unconscious.
It said that she strangulated her kids with a pillow and tried to end her life by consuming sleeping pills, hanging herself and cutting her veins.
All of them were taken to hospital where Pramod and the two minors were declared dead while the woman underwent treatment.
During trial, she claimed innocence and led evidence in support of her defence.
She sought leniency in sentence saying she was a widow and has remained in jail from March, 2010, till July, 2012, and claimed that the case did not fall in the category of rarest of rare.
The prosecutor, however, said no leniency should be shown to the woman as she had murdered her minor son and daughter and did not care about her relation with the kids.
