Mumbai, June 30 (IANS) A Mumbai court Thursday held a former naval officer guilty of culpable homicide of television producer Neeraj Grover and his actress girlfriend Mariah Monica Susairaj responsible for destroying evidence in the sensational 2008 killing in the city.
Holding Emile Jerome Mathew guilty of homicide, Sessions Judge M.W. Chandwani ruled it did not amount to murder. He will pronounce the sentences Friday.
A convict of culpable homicide can be punished with imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years.
Mathew’s lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan told mediapersons that the court ruled out the theory of conspiracy and rejected that the murder was a pre-meditated act on the part of the accused.
Mariah’s lawyer Sharif Shaikh told mediapersons that since she could get only a maximum of three years jail – which she has already served as an undertrial – she would walk free Friday.
He termed the outcome in Mariah’s case as ‘a victory’.
In one of the most gruesome crimes of passion in recent times, Grover, a producer working with a private television company, was killed by Mathew May 7, 2008, when he found him naked in Mariah’s apartment in Dheeraj Solitaire building in the northwest suburb of Malad.
