A Mumbai sessions court on Friday sentenced a 10 year jail term for former naval officer Emile Jerome Mathew in the May 2008 murder case of television executive Neeraj Grover.
Sessions Judge MW Chandwani sentenced Emile Jerome to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and three years for destruction of evidence.
Co-accused Kannada actress and Jerome's girlfriend Maria Monica Susairaj, who was also found guilty of destruction of evidence, managed to walk freely as she has already spent her jail term of 3 years.
According to the prosecution, Jerome had gone to Maria's residence in Malad, a Mumbai suburb, on May 7, 2008 where he got into a fight with Grover, 26, during which the naval officer stabbed the TV executive to death.
However, in an earlier confessional statement, Susairaj had claimed that she had never called Grover or Jerome to her flat and that she was an innocent victim of a fight two men had over her.
The statement essentially put the blame on Jerome for the death. Later however, in her last statement to the trial court, Susairaj retracted from her previous statement, saying it was given under duress.
Rediff.com publishes in public interest Susairaj's first confessional statement, from which she retracted later.
