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State v Chandra [2012] FJHC 1359; HAC40.2011 (8 October 2012)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF FIJI
AT SUVA
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Case No: HAC 40 of 2011

BETWEEN:

STATE

AND:

SURESH CHANDRA

BEFORE : HON. MR. JUSTICE PAUL K. MADIGAN

Counsel : Ms T. Leweni for State
Mr. I. Khan with Mr. M. Degei for Accused

Dates of Hearing : 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th October 2012
Date of Summing Up : 5th October 2012
Date of Judgment : 5th October 2012
Date of Sentence : 8th October 2012

SENTENCE

[1] SURESH Chand after a trial before me with three assessors, you have been convicted of the murder of Farzana Begum on the 15th January 2011.

[2] The facts of the case were that you and Farzana were in a romantic relationship even though you were married with a child. On the 15th January 2011 in the evening you and she were drinking with her landlord in the premises above her flat. The two of you argued and you hit her in the mouth. She was upset and went to her flat downstairs. You carried on drinking with the landlord but when he went inside to attend to things for 20 minutes you absented yourself and went downstairs to Farzana even though she had told others that she didn't want to talk to anyone. The landlord saw you with her then through a hole in his floor and he says you had your hands around her neck. You came back up stairs but when you went back down shortly after you shouted for help saying that Farzana had hanged herself. A sulu was tied to the rafters but nobody saw her hanging. A post mortem examination of the body revealed death by strangulation and discounted death by hanging.

[3] The law dictates that I pass a sentence of life imprisonment on you and that I now do.

[4] I do however have a discretion in fixing a minimum term of imprisonment on you. In doing that I take into account the fact that although the deceased was your girlfriend she had no security of relationship with you because you were married to another. I also take into account the fact that you by subterfuge arranged the scene to look like suicide and then had calmly returned to drink with the landlord upstairs.

[5] Your counsel tells me that you are 33 years of age and that you are a welder by trade. He says that you do volunteer community work in a hospital and with crippled children, although I have seen no proof of that.

[6] Killing ones girlfriend is bad enough as it is without the aggravating features I have referred to above, so I set a minimum term of imprisonment before you are eligible for parole of eighteen (18) years.

[7] You are sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of eighteen years imprisonment.

Paul K. Madigan
JUDGE

At Suva
8th October 2012