Bhubaneswar: The District and Sessions Court, Khurda here Tuesday awarded life imprisonment to four persons after holding them guilty of killing an elderly couple in the City in 2012.
Additional District and Sessions Judge (III) Himanshu Sekhar Mallick handed down life imprisonment to Bijay Yadav, Ranjit Jena, Priyaranjan Pati and Butu Jena for killing Kunjabihari Panigrahy, 73, and his wife Jyotsnadevi Panigrahy, 72, of Acharya Vihar area under Saheed Nagar police limits after looting valuables from their residence September 13, 2012, Special Public Prosecutor Bidhu Bhushan Mohanty said.
According to the case details, the couple stayed at L3-134 in Acharya Vihar, a major city residential area. The multi-storey building, owned by Panigrahys, also housed at least 90 students who were rented out rooms by the couple.
Bijay, then a business administration student residing at the couple’s house on rent, was aware of the property and hatched a conspiracy with the three others to loot the senior citizens. Around midnight, they first tried to rob Kunjabihari, a retired superintending engineer, of his belongings. When he resisted their attempts, they hit him with a wooden stick and smacked his head with an empty gas cylinder even before he could shout. The old man fell unconscious.
All this while Jyotsnadevi was on the ground floor of the building. When she went upstairs, they strangulated her to death with a computer cable wire. At about 5 am the next day, Bhanumati, their house help, came in and found that the grill was ajar but the bedroom door was closed. She called the couple a few times and received no answer. After cleaning the room, she went away thinking the Panigrahys must be at the temple but when she did not find them there, Bhanumati returned at about 10 am. She went inside to discover the terrible scene of the couple lying in a profusely bleeding condition on the second floor of their home.
When police came in after being intimated by one of the boarders, an ambulance had also been called in. Kunjabihari was shifted to a nearby private hospital where he died during treatment a few days later. Later, the culprits were arrested and the trial began. The incident sent shock waves in the City, raising serious questions about the safety and security of senior citizens.
