HC upholds life sentence to parents for murdering daughter with intellectual disability

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has upheld the life sentence awarded by a trial court in Virudhunagar district to a couple for murdering their nine-year-old daughter with intellectual disability.

A Division Bench of Justices G.K. Ilanthiraiyan and R. Poornima said that while the court sympathises with the accused parents for the difficulties they faced in bringing up the child, it must be borne in mind that the child did not come into this world on her own but was born to the accused parents.

If the law permits parents to eliminate children born with intellectual disability, no such child would survive in this world. It is the bounden duty of the parents to take care of their child, whether the child is born with mental illness, physical disability, or without any disability at all, the court said.

The court was hearing a criminal appeal filed by the couple against the judgment passed by the Fast Track Mahila Court at Srivilliputhur in Virudhunagar district. It is said that in 2018, the couple, unable to take care of the child, administered poison.

The judges said the child was in the exclusive custody of her parents who themselves admitted the child to the hospital stating that they administered poison to her.

The parents are the first and the second accused and they neither lodged any complaint nor claimed that the poisoning was accidental or caused by a third party. When a person is in the exclusive custody of the accused, it is their legal duty to explain the circumstances leading to the death. The accused have failed to offer any plausible explanation, the court said.

The medical evidence clearly proved that the child died due to poisoning administered by the accused, the court said.

No one has the right to take the law into their own hands and extinguish the life of another person. Even today, many parents make immense sacrifices, and even lay down their lives, for children born with disabilities. Therefore, the trial court rightly convicted the accused for the offence of murder, the court said and dismissed the criminal appeal.