HYDERABAD: A 32-year-old housewife was sentenced to death by a local court in Suryapet on Friday for killing her seven-month-old daughter in 2021 as “human sacrifice” to get rid of her own alleged sarpa dosham — an astrological configuration believed to bring hardships in life.
B Bharathi alias Lasya is already in jail for trying to kill her husband two years later with a weighing stone — a conviction that played a key role in the death penalty handed down on Friday by the additional district sessions court in Suryapet. “Based on all the evidence, the court concluded the case as ‘rarest of the rare’ and awarded the death penalty to the accused,” Kodad DSP Sridhar Reddy said.
Bharathi had smeared vermillion and turmeric on herself and her daughter while performing a special puja in her bedroom at home in Mekalapati Thanda in Mothey mandal in Suryapet district on April 15, 2021. “During the puja, my wife killed our daughter by slitting her throat. She also slit the baby’s tongue,” Bharathi’s husband B Krishna, complainant and prosecution witness, said in his statement to the Mothey police.
Krishna said his ailing father was the only other family member present at home at the time. “My father was bedridden. He heard the baby crying and suspected something foul. Using a stick for support, he got up from the bed and saw Bharathi walking out with blood-stained clothes. She left the house, saying she had offered our baby as a sacrifice to gods and got rid of sarpa dosham,” Krishna said.
Alerted by Krishna’s father, neighbours and relatives immediately reached the house and shifted the girl to a nearby hospital, where she was declared dead. The Mothey police took the accused into custody near her house.
During the trial, 10 witnesses were examined, including the victim’s uncles, who first saw the body and the forensic experts, said Mothey SI Yadavendra Reddy
Bharathi was released on bail after the chargesheet was filed in 2021 and started living with her husband. “In 2023, Bharathi attacked Krishna on the head with a one-kilo weighing stone when he was asleep. On his complaint, an attempt to murder case was lodged and she was again arrested. In that case, she was convicted by a local court in Suryapet on April 9 and awarded a year’s jail,” the SI said.
Bharathi and Krishna were classmates in school and fell in love later. “My right leg is affected due to polio. I wanted to marry Bharathi but due to my poor financial position, her family chose another man. Bharathi married him in 2008 but later divorced him due to personal problems. Later, I married her in 2019,” Krishna said in his statement.
According to Krishna, Bharathi suffered from mental health issues due to her marital problems. “A few years before our marriage, an astrologer told her she was suffering from sarpa dosham. She was obsessed with sarpa dosham rituals and used to watch videos about it on her smartphone,” Krishna said.
The family also consulted a psychiatrist in Khammam a few months prior to the murder, and he prescribed medicine for Bharathi, which, according to Krishna, she never took. The accused is currently lodged at Chanchalguda women’s central prison in Hyderabad.
