Mangaluru, Oct 25: The Karnataka high court on Tuesdayacquitted Mohan Kumar alias Cyanide Mohan in the rape and murder of 32-year-old Leelavati Mistry, a resident of Vamapadavu in Bantwal taluk, who was found dead at a KSRTC bus stand in Mysuru in September 2005.
A division bench comprising Justice Ravi Malimath and John Michael Cunha noted that both the postmortem and Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) reports only established the presence of organophosporous (insecticide), and the 'last seen' theory was not proved by the prosecution.
Partly allowing a criminal appeal filed by Mohan, the bench, however, upheld the trial court's order holding him guilty under section 392 of IPC (robbery), for which a five-year jail term was imposed.
However, the same was set off as Mohan had already spent seven years in jail since his arrest in July 2009.
On October 12, the court had commuted Mohan's death penalty to life sentence in the murder of 22-year-old Anitha who was found dead at a KSRTC bus stand in Hassan on June 18, 2009.
The third case in which Mohan was awarded the death penalty - the murder of Sunanda Pujari - will be taken up on October 31.
Took her to Mysuru on pretext of job interview. Leelavati was found dead in the urinal at the Mysuru bus stand on September 10, 2005.
The prosecution had alleged that Mohan befriended Leelavati in August 2005 claiming that he belonged to her caste and would marry her. On September 9, 2005, he took her to Mysuru from Bantwal on the pretext of an job interview.
He booked a room at a lodge and the duo checked in. Later, he allegedly raped her.
The next morning, he asked her to remove her ornaments and keep them in her bag to give the interviewers the impression that she belonged to a poor family.
He also gave her a pill laced with cyanide, claiming it was an 'anti-pregnancy medicine' and asked her to consume it in the lavatory. Then he checked out of the lodge and decamped with her jewellery.
On December 21, 2013, the IV additional sessions judge, Dakshina Kannada district, had awarded death penalty to Mohan in connection with the murders of Anitha, Leelavati and Sunanda.
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