When an India professor used chemistry as a defense in the killing trial, he failed

“Are you a chemical professor?” The judge asked.

“Yes,” Mamta Pathak answered, clinging to her hand in a respected Names.

The retired college teacher was in a white sari, and glasses floating on her nose, stood before two judges in the courtroom in the state of Maadi Pradesh in central India, and spoke as if he was giving a forensic chemistry lecture.

“In death, she argued, her voice trembling but composed,” “thermal burning and an electrical burning mark cannot be distinguished without an appropriate chemical analysis. “

Through the bench, Judge Vivic Agarawal mentioned, “The death doctor after the death said that there are clear signs of electric shock.”

It was a rare and almost surreal moment-a 63-year-old woman, accused of killing her husband by electricity, explaining to the court how the tissue reactions have revealed the nature of the burning.

The exchange, which was arrested on the video during the hearing in April, went a virus in India and stunned the Internet. But in court, no such a degree of confidence -like confidence can retract the issue of prosecution – killing a husband and motivation rooted in doubt and marital dispute.

Last month, the Supreme Court refused to appeal Mamta Pathak and endorsed the prison sentence for the killing of her husband Niraj Pathak, a retired doctor.

While Pathak installed a vibrant defense, which is a self -motivation – he called gaps in the autopsy, insulation of the house, and even the electrochemical theory – the court found that the circumstantial evidence was boycotted: she had anesthetized her husband with grains and then realized it electricly.

In court, Mamta, a mother of two children, was looked at a pile of excessive case files, and moved them before she grows.

“Sir, the signs of electrical burning cannot be distinguished as death (before death) or after death (after death),” citing the forensic book.

“How did they write (doctors) that it is an electric burning sign in the post -death (report)?”

Experts say electrical burns are microscopic, look similar before and after death, making the standard examination uninterrupted. A close study of skin changes may reveal whether the post -death burning, according to one paper.

Follow an improvised exchange of chemical reactions, with the judge who is looking for in laboratory operations. Mamta talked about different acids, explaining that a discrimination can be performed using an electronic microscope – something that is not possible in the post -death room. I tried to walk the judge through the electronic microscope and various acids. Three women smiled in the background.

Mamta plowed – she said she was studying the law in prison for a year. It was fluctuated through her affiliated files with posters and quoted from forensic books, and referred to alleged gaps in the investigation – from the incomplete crime scene to the absence of electrical and nature experts qualified at the site of the crime.

She said: “Our house was secured from 2017 to 2022, and the inspections confirmed that it was protected against electric fire.”

Mamta told the court that her husband suffers from high blood pressure and heart disease. I stated that the actual cause of death was narrowed and “coronary arteries due to aging.” I also suggested that it might have slipped and maintained a hematoma, but no CT scan has been performed to confirm this.

Neeraj Pathak, 65, was found dead in the family home on April 29, 2021. The autopsy has been ruled by the cause of death. A few days later, Mama was arrested and charged with killing.

The police seized an 11 -meter electric wire with a two -kind plug, and CCTV clips from the couple’s house. Six tablets of birth control pill are recovered in a 10 -strip.

The post -death report was martyred with the respiratory heart attack in multiple locations as a cause of death, as it occurred from 36 to 72 hours before the autopsy was performed on May 1.

“But they did not find my fingerprints on the tablet tape,” Mama said to the judges.

But her arguments soon collapsed, leaving the judges Agawal and Divennarane Sinha are not convinced.

Nearly four decades ago, Mamta and Niraj Pathak have apparently lived a middle-class life in Chattarbur-a drought-vulnerable area in the state of Madi Pradesh known for its farms, granite quarries and small companies.

She taught chemistry at the local government college; He was the chief medical official at the District Hospital. They raised two sons – one settled abroad, the other, and a house with his mother. Niraj voluntarily retired in 2019 after 39 years as a government doctor and then opened a private clinic at home.

The accident occurred during the epidemic. Neeraj was showing Covid symptoms and kept it to the first floor. Mamta and her son, Nitish, remained on the basement. Al -Darajan from the ground floor linked the Niraj rooms to the open exhibition and a waiting hall of his own clinic, where half a scale of employees between the laboratory and the medical store was exposed.

The 97 -page ruling stated that Mamta reported that her husband, Niraj, was not responding to his bed on April 29, but he did not inform the doctor or police until May 1. Instead, she took her older son to JHANSI – more than 130 km away – without a clear reason, according to the driver, and returned in the same evening. I ignored ignorance of how he died when the police finally alerted.

Under this silence, a turbulent marriage situation. The rulers shed light on the long -term marital dispute, with the presence of the spouses who live on the side of Mamta suspected of her husband from marital infidelity.

The morning of the day he died, Niraj called in a colleague, claiming that Mamatta was “torturing him”, imprisoning him in the bathroom, blocking food for several days, and causing physical injuries. He also accused her of taking money, cards of ATMs, vehicle keys and fixed deposit documents for the bank. Upon assistance, Ibn Niraj called a friend who warned the police, who then saved the retired doctor, describing it as a “Mamta nursery”.

The couple had recently lived, adding a weight to the court’s doubts.

Mamta told the court that she was “the best mother”, and she provides a birthday card from her children as a guide. She also showed pictures of herself nourishing her husband and her stations with the family.

However, the judges were not affected. They pointed out that such symbols of affection did not wipe the motivation – after all, the “transferred mother” could also be “a suspicious wife.”

Fifty minutes after her deposit, after her questions and defending herself against court suspicions, Mamta’s composure of the first time stumbled.

“I know one thing … I didn’t kill him,” she said, her voice is backward.

At another moment, I admitted, “I can’t take this much more.”

In an attempt to relieve stress, Judge Agarawal commented, “You should use in this … you should take 50 minutes in the kidney.”

“Forty minutes, sir. But they are young children.”

“Young children in the college? But you called you an assistant professor,” the judge pressed.

“But they are children, sir,” she answered.

“Do not tell us such stories,” the judge Agarawal interrupted sharply.

She not only fighting Mamta as a defendant, but as a teacher turning the court hall into a chemistry laboratory – in the hope of proving her innocence through science. However, in the end, cold facts have proven stronger than her lessons.