A lecturer was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Odisha’s Bolangir district on Wednesday for killing two persons by sending a parcel bomb as a wedding gift in 2018.

Punjilal Meher, an English lecturer and former principal at Jyoti Vikash Junior College in Bhainsa, had a professional rivalry with the groom’s mother at the college. He sent the parcel bomb as a wedding gift in 2018, which claimed two lives, that of the newly married man and his grandmother.

“The court accepted our arguments and the evidence we produced in the court. He (Punjilal) has been awarded life imprisonment. The court admitted it as a heinous crime but declined to term it as a rarest of rare one, and refused to accept demand for a death penalty. Right to life is an important issue. However, we are happy with the judgement,” said government counsel Chittaranjan Kanunugo.

The session judge court in Patnagarh convicted him under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 201 (destroy evidence of a crime) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, Odisha police in a release said.

The court sentenced life imprisonment under two sections, 10 years of imprisonment under two charges and seven years imprisonment under another charge. The court also imposed a fine of ₹1.40 lakh on the convict.

The release said: “In order to prove the case, the prosecution examined 62 witnesses, 100 numbers of documentary evidence and 51 numbers of material objects
in the court.”

As the incident snowballed into a major controversy, the then Naveen Patnaik government ordered a crime branch inquiry and the then crime branch chief Arun Bothra took up the case. Due to the lack of direct evidence, it took him nearly two months to arrest Punjilal. He was taken into custody on April 24, 2018.

As per the report, Punjilal had developed a personal enmity against his colleague Sanjukta Sahoo, who replaced him as principal in-charge of Jyoti Bikash Junior College. Embittered by the loss of professional stature, Punjilal planned the parcel bomb attack on Sahoo’s house. He also took to the Internet to learn how to make a bomb, and it took him nearly seven months to learn the process.

After he got to know about Sahoo’s 26-year-old son Soumya Sekhar Sahoo’s marriage on February 18, 2018, Punjilal planned the blast on the wedding day. He had also tested smaller bombs made by him before sending the parcel bomb, the report said.

Punjilal went to Raipur in Chhattisgarh, about 230 km from Patnagarh, and sent a parcel bomb weighing 2.1kg to Sahoo’s residence at Brahmapura, as a wedding gift. The parcel was delivered on February 23, five days after the marriage.

The bomb exploded after Sahoo’s newly-wed son Soumya, a software engineer, opened the thread of the parcel. The explosion killed Soumya and his grandmother Jemamani Sahoo. Soumya’s wife Reemarani also suffered grievous injuries. The local police failed to crack the case until the crime branch took up the case.

Sahoo said: “I am yet to understand whether Punjilal is a human being or a demon. I am happy with the judgement. He had rivalry with me. Let him spend the rest of his life in jail. If he goes against the verdict, we will also challenge
in the court.”

Soumya’s father Rabindra Kumar Sahoo said: “Though I had expected death penalty for Punjilal, I am happy with the judgement. Let him languish in the jail. Not a single day passed when I did not turn up in the court seeking justice for my son.”