Woman, lover get lifer for murdering fellow MBA student

A woman and her lover were sentenced to life by a court for killing a fellow student by offering him ‘prasad’ laced with poison.

A woman and her lover, both MBA students, were sentenced to life by a sessions court on Thursday for killing a fellow student by offering him ‘prasad’ laced with poison in a crime of passion.

Additional sessions judge S S Phansalkar-Joshi pronounced the sentence in Pune a day after holding both Aditi Sharma and Praveen Khandelwal guilty of poisoning Udit Bharati last year bringing to a close the infamous case. A fine of Rs 10,000 each was also slapped on each of the convicts.

According to the prosecution, both Udit and Aditi had come to Pune from Jammu in 2006 to do their MBA course at a Wakad-based institute and fell in love that was expected to culminate into marriage after they completing the course.

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Praveen hailed from Jaipur. All the three were aged 24 years.

However, a love triangle emerged when both Aditi and Praveen got a job offer in Gurgaon and left Pune and developed an intimate relationship at the workplace.

Sensing that Udit could prove to be an obstacle, the duo conspired to get rid of him.

Aditi and Praveen returned to Pune on April 22, 2007 during when the woman called Udit over to a lodge in Chinchwad. When Udit arrived, Aditi offered Udit ‘prasad’ laced with arsenic.

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Udit died on April 24 and a post-mortem report confirmed that poison was administered to the victim.

When the judge pronounced the life sentence and asked Aditi and Praveen if they wanted to say anything , both the convicts maintained that they were ‘innocent’.