Cuttack: In a jolt to former Gunupur MLA Ramamurthy Gomango, the Orissa High Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court order convicting him and sentencing him to life imprisonment in connection with the murder of his wife Sashirekha in 1995.
The special judge of MP/MLA court in Bhubaneswar had in June 2023 held Gomango guilty under IPC Section 302 (murder) on the basis of the statements of 11 witnesses and 15 documents.
The former legislator was also found guilty of destroying evidence under IPC Section 201.
Challenging the lower court’s verdict, Gomango had moved the High Court which upheld the order that convicted him and awarded life imprisonment.
Notably, his wife’s half-burnt body was recovered from the bathroom of his quarter in MLA Colony at Kharvela Nagar on August 29, 1995. She was reportedly four-months pregnant then.
Initially, a case unnatural death was registered as Gomango told police that she had died by suicide but the investigation later established that the former MLA had killed his wife following which a sub-inspector lodged a complaint against the former MLA at Kharavela Nagar police station.
The prosecution also succeeded in proving that Gomango committed the murder of his wife and attempted to portray it as a case of suicide by claiming that she set herself ablaze by pouring kerosene over her body. The postmortem report of the victim suggested that her death was ante-mortem in nature and she had suffered severe head injury, sources added.
Gomango, who was elected on Janata Dal ticket to the Assembly from the constituency in 1995, joined the BJP in 2000. He was re-elected from Gunupur in 2000 on BJP ticket with a huge margin of over 30,000 votes. However, in the 2004 Assembly election, he lost to his nearest Congress rival Hema Gomango by a margin of 20,000 votes. He quit the BJP shortly after the BJD snapped ties with the saffron party in 2009. But he was back in the BJP after being denied a BJD ticket to contest for Gunupur Assembly seat in 2014.
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