An Additional District and Sessions Court in Meerut has sentenced a woman and her lover to death for strangling her husband to death and staging the murder as a fatal snakebite. The court awarded capital punishment to Ravita and her partner Amardeep on October 16, holding them guilty of murdering Amit Kashyap at his home in Akbarpur Sadat village under the Bahsuma police station limits. The verdict came after 85 hearings conducted over 552 days, with both convicts attending the pronouncement via video conferencing from jail.
Autopsy Unravels Staged Snakebite Claim
According to the prosecution, Ravita and Amardeep were in an extramarital relationship and viewed Amit as an obstacle to their affair. On the night of April 12, 2025, Amardeep entered the residence, where the pair strangled a sleeping Amit to death. To avert suspicion and portray the incident as an accidental demise, the accused left a live snake on the bed beside the body. The following morning, Ravita raised an alarm, claiming her husband had died from a snakebite. However, family members grew suspicious of the circumstances, prompting authorities to send the body for a post-mortem examination. The medical report established that Amit had died of manual strangulation rather than envenomation, exposing the conspiracy.
Fast Investigation and Swift Trial Lead to Conviction
Following the autopsy findings, the victim’s brother, Monu Kashyap, lodged a named first information report against Ravita and Amardeep, leading to their prompt arrest by the local police. Investigators gathered forensic and circumstantial evidence, compiling an exhaustive charge sheet of around 250 pages. During the judicial proceedings, the prosecution produced 12 witnesses to corroborate the sequence of events. On October 7, the court formally convicted both accused of murder and criminal conspiracy, before hearing arguments on quantum and delivering the death sentence nine days later.
Court Cites Rarest of Rare Threshold and Institutional Trust
Characterizing the homicide as falling within the rarest of rare category, the court highlighted the gravity of the crime and its detrimental impact on family values and marital sanctity. Drawing upon the mythological devotion of Savitri and Satyavan, the judge observed that such premeditated violence erodes foundational societal trust, noting that fabricating an accidental snakebite to conceal a spouse’s murder aggravated the heinousness of the offence. The victim’s mother, Munesh, expressed relief at the ruling, stating that the capital punishment delivered long-awaited justice to the family. The decision marks the second death penalty pronounced in Meerut within three days, following the October 14 sentencing of Muskan and Sahil in the Saurabh Rajput blue drum murder case, bringing the total number of capital sentences awarded by the local judiciary to four within a 72-hour span.
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