Delhi techie gets life for killing wife

Seven years after he murdered and chopped his wife into pieces, software engineer Rajesh Gulati from Delhi was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Dehradun court on Friday.

Rajesh had murdered Anupama at their Dehradun residence on October 17, 2010 while their 4-year-old twins slept in the adjacent room. To hide his crime, he chopped Anupama’s body into 72 pieces, hid them in a deep freezer for around two months, disposing of parts on occasions.

Gulati was held in December 2010 when Anupama’s brother raised an alarm about her “missing sister” with the police.

In a fully-packed court room, additional district judge Vinod Kumar pronounced the quantum of punishment on Friday as the convicted techie stood motionless while hearing his punishment. Rajesh had been convicted under Sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 201 (casing disappearance of evidence) a day earlier by the local court on Thursday. Both the victim and the convict belonged to Delhi.

The court also slapped a penalty of ₹15 lakh on him, of which ₹14.30 lakh will be invested as fixed deposit for Gulatis’ children in a nationalised bank, and the rest will go to state exchequer.

The two kids, now 11, live with their mother’s family in Delhi.

Anupama’s brother Sujan Kumar Pradhan, who is a Delhibased bio technologist, visited Dehradun “around 200 times” over the past seven years in connection with the case. “It’s been a long fight for justice and we are satisfied with the judgment. We are especially happy about the court’s decision to slap monetary fine on Rajesh, which will come in handy for the children’s higher studies,” Pradhan told HT.

Rajesh’s lawyer Utkarsh Singh, however, said that they would challenge the judgment. “We’ll first study the detailed copy of the judgment and will appeal against the verdict in the high court,” he said.

Pradhan, too, said that they (Anupama’s family) will continue to fight for justice if the opposition appealed in a higher court. “We’ll make sure that his punishment is not reduced,” he said. Rajesh and Anupama had a love marriage in 1999, and moved to the US a year after. But discord trickled in soon after.