KANPUR: An eight-year-old boy’s chilling courtroom testimony helped convict his mother, Priyanka, 30, who was sentenced to death on Thursday for drowning her three younger sons in the Sengur river in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district last year. The court found that she committed the murders under pressure from her lover.
“A woman who can kill her own children has no right to live in society,” said Additional District and Sessions Judge Saif Ahmed, who termed the case a “rarest of rare” crime. Priyanka was also fined ₹2.5 lakh. Her partner, Ashish—her late husband’s nephew—was sentenced to life imprisonment and fined ₹1 lakh.
According to investigators, Ashish had told Priyanka he would only continue the relationship if she “got rid of the children.” On June 27, 2024, after an argument with Ashish, Priyanka took her four sons to the riverbank in Devarpur. She had sedated them with food laced with drugs before throwing them into the river one by one. Locals managed to rescue her eldest son, who later testified in court.
The bodies of her other three sons—aged six, four, and 18 months—were recovered soon after. Police arrested Priyanka and Ashish the following day.
The prosecution built its case around the boy’s eyewitness account, backed by testimony from six other witnesses, including Priyanka’s brother-in-law. “The crime was proven beyond doubt to be intentional and premeditated,” said government counsel Abhishek Mishra. “It was horrifying and deserved the strictest punishment.”
Priyanka had returned to her parental home after her husband, Avnish Kumar, died of electrocution while she was pregnant with their fourth child. Struggling financially, she began a relationship with Ashish.
Since her arrest, she has been held in Etawah jail. She had repeatedly asked to meet her surviving son, now living with his paternal aunt, but the reunion never took place.
Outside the courtroom, her family expressed grief but accepted the verdict. “Ashish should have been hanged too,” said her aunt, Geeta Devi. Her father, Pramod Kumar, a barber, added, “We never had money to hire a lawyer or seek bail. We will appeal to the President for clemency.”
