2013 panchayat poll murder: HC upholds life sentence for duo
Times of India | 21 January 2026
Kolkata: Trusting the victim's dying declaration, Calcutta High Court on Tuesday upheld life imprisonment to two convicts for a murder that took place a day before the 2013 panchayat polls in Birbhum.
Sagar Ghosh, father of Independent candidate Hriday Ghosh, was shot multiple times at the entrance of his home at Bandhnabagram village under Parui police station. The victim's family said Hriday opted to stand as an Independent candidate after he was denied a ticket by the Trinamool. Fearing for his life, he was staying at his sister's place.
Subrata and Bhagirath, the two convicts, were members of TMC's Bandhnabagram panchayat. The incident happened on July 22, the night before the panchayat polls. Sagar made the dying declaration before his wife and daughter-in-law, who were with him at that time, after being shot once, followed by 3 more rounds.
Saying that the victim "had no time to come up with the assailants' names or falsely implicate them", the HC division bench of justices Rajasekhar Mantha and Ajay Kumar Gupta observed: "The dying declaration came at the very inception when the crime unfolded." The court also upheld the statements of the victim's wife and daughter-in-law and his declaration, as told by the duo before the court. The declaration was medically corroborated.
On the question regarding the victim's "state of mind", the HC said the doctors who attended to the victim stated that although he was in pain, he was "mentally conscious". "The victim did not have any time to conjure up the names of the convicts or any reason to falsely implicate them," the HC held. The division bench said: "The medical evidence established that the victim, though in pain, was fully conscious. The pain did not wipe out his memory." According to the statements of Sagar's kin, he also told the assailants' names to police when they arrived at his home. The HC gave the convicts a month's time to pay a fine of Rs 1 lakh each, which would be equally distributed among the deceased's wife and daughter-in-law, considering the trauma they suffered. If they failed to pay, the state was directed to pay Rs 5 lakh to them.
Sagar's wife and daughter-in-law said in their statements that the assailants claimed to be police officers. The autopsy surgeon opined that the cause of death was homicidal and that the injuries found on the victim's body were caused by bullets. The forensic expert opined that the bullets were fired from a 9 mm pistol.
Subrata and Bhagirath moved Calcutta HC against their conviction and sentencing by a Birbhum court in 2018. Their contention was that the victim was not in a "state of mind" to have recognised them.