Bombay HC grants interim bail to woman sentenced to life for poisoning daughters

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The Bombay High Court has granted interim bail to a 46-year-old Thane woman who was sentenced to life imprisonment earlier this year by a local court for poisoning her two minor daughters to death.

The order was given by a bench of Justices Bhushan Gavai and Sarang Kotwal on Tuesday. The woman, Jina Agarwal, had filed a plea seeking suspension of her life sentence till her appeal against the Thane District Court order was decided upon by the high court.

She had also appealed to the court that she be released on interim bail till then. The bench allowed Agarwal's plea noting that she was suffering from depression due to her husband's death at the time of the incident which took place 13 years ago.

"In an unfortunate incident that took place, the appellant (Agarwal) is alleged to have administered sleeping pills to her two daughters, and she had herself consumed the same. While she survived, her two daughters succumbed to death," the bench said.

"From the material placed on record, it is revealed that the appellant was undergoing (suffering from) depression on account of untimely death of her husband," it added.

"In the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, the application deserves to be allowed," the bench said. According to the plea, Agarwal's husband died in September 2005 after he suffered a heart attack while driving to work.

Two months later, Agarwal wrote a suicide note stating that she was depressed and thus had decided to end the lives of her daughters, aged seven and two, and to commit suicide herself. According to the case details, Agarwal then mixed some sleeping pills in a soft drink and made her daughters drink it. She had it too.

The girls were found unconscious and Agarwal writhing in pain at her residence by her brother and father a few hours later. The police had initially registered a case of accidental death, but later filed charges against Agarwal under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 309 (attempt to suicide). She was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment by the district court in February this year.