Rajkot: A sessions court in Junagadh has sentenced 19-year-old Minakshi Bamaniya and her lover, Amit Parmar, also 19, to simple life imprisonment for the cold-blooded murder of Minakshi’s mother, Daksha.The crime, committed on the night of May 26, 2023, was pieced together through electronic and forensic evidence, even though several key witnesses — including the victim’s family members — turned hostile during the trial. According to the prosecution, the teenage couple had plotted the murder in advance. Minakshi, whose father was away working in Palanpur, lived with her mother and two younger siblings. She was in a secret relationship with Amit. On the night of the killing, in a pre-planned move, Minakshi laced Daksha’s food with a sedative and switched off the house’s CCTV cameras before letting Amit inside. The plan took a turn when Daksha woke up and found the two together. An argument broke out, and a panicked Minakshi and Amit decided to eliminate her before she could inform Minakshi’s father. When Daksha returned to sleep, Minakshi picked up a heavy iron wrench and struck her mother repeatedly on the head while Amit kept watch outside. The postmortem recorded 16 lacerations and deep skull fractures. In an attempt to cover up the crime, Minakshi misled her younger siblings by claiming their mother had become “possessed by a deity” and injured herself with a pestle. She repeated this story to her aunt. A major challenge for the prosecution, led by district government pleader N K Purohit, was that key witnesses — including Minakshi’s father, the complainant, and her siblings — retracted their statements in court and turned hostile. Despite the absence of eyewitness accounts, investigators built a strong case using scientific evidence. A mobile phone recovered from Amit contained incriminating Instagram chats in which the couple discussed giving Daksha sleeping pills, including one message saying, “Put it in the vegetables, roti and buttermilk… gave so many, yet no one is sleeping.” A video retrieved from the phone showed the two together in the house just after midnight, shortly before the murder. Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) reports supported the electronic evidence, confirming the presence of the sedative in Daksha’s stomach and establishing that the injuries could not have been self-inflicted. Principal district judge B G Dave held that the comprehensive electronic evidence and conclusive medical reports proved the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Minakshi Bamaniya and Amit Parmar were convicted under Section 302 (murder) read with Section 114 (abettor present when offence is committed) of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced to simple life imprisonment.
