Idukki (Keralam) | A court in Keralam has sentenced a 63-year-old man to life imprisonment for murdering a female plantation worker back in 2012 to conceal his affair with her, which had led to her becoming pregnant.

Thodupuzha Principal District cum Sessions Judge Sanu S Panicker sentenced Mathew Devasya to life imprisonment for the offence under section 302 (murder) of the IPC and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on him, district prosecutor S S Saneesh said.

According to the prosecution, Devasya, also known as Thankachan, was a supervisor of a cardamom plantation near Kattappana here and the victim -- Ambili -- was a worker there.

The two had an affair, and Ambili became pregnant, the prosecutor said.

While the accused was a married man and had children, the victim was unmarried.

To conceal the affair and prevent his reputation from being tarnished, the accused decided to kill Ambili, and for that he arranged plastic rope and a tarpaulin and asked her to meet him near the Pampadumpara area, the prosecution argued.

When she reached there, he took the eight-month pregnant Ambili to a nearby coffee estate, where in an isolated area, he strangulated her with the plastic rope, wrapped her body in the tarpaulin, tied it with stones and dropped it into a pond, the prosecution had told the court.

When the woman did not return home, her parents filed a missing person's complaint, and while police were searching for Ambili, Devasya tried to commit suicide, the prosecutor said.

Several days after the murder, workers at the Pampadumpara coffee plantation saw a foul-smelling blue tarpaulin in the nearby pond and informed the police.

When the police pulled out the tarpaulin, they found the bodies of a woman and a child with the umbilical cord still attached, the prosecutor said.

The parents identified it as Ambili's body, and DNA tests also confirmed it.

Subsequently, it was revealed that Devasya was the father of the baby, and he was arrested.

Prosecutor Saneesh said that there were no eyewitnesses in the case, but the accused was convicted and sentenced based on the "clear and accurate circumstantial and scientific evidence".