Ex-Madhya Pradesh Deputy CM’s son, wife sentenced to life for murdering brother and his family

Former MP Deputy Chief Minister's son and others sentenced to life for brutal murder of family in Chhattisgarh.

A court in Chhattisgarh’s Korba sentenced Harbhajan Singh Kanwar, son of former Madhya Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister, the late Pyarelal Kanwar, and four others to life after they were held guilty of murdering Pyarelal’s other son and his family in 2021. 

Among those sentenced include Harbhajan’s wife Dhankunwar and his brother-in-law Parmeshwar Kanwar, besides two other persons, Ramprasad Mannewar and Surendra Singh Kanwar.

According to Additional Public Prosecutor Krishna Kumar Dwivedi, District and Additional Sessions Judge (III) Sunil Kumar Nande on Wednesday (January 29) convicted the accused after it was established that Harbhajan had hatched the conspiracy to kill Harish Kanwar, his wife Sumitra Kanwar and their daughter Yashika (who were respectively 40, 35 and four years old at the time of their death) over a property dispute.  

The victims were brutally murdered at their house at Bhaisma village in Korba on April 21, 2021 after assailants attacked them multiple times on head and other parts with sharp-edged weapons. 

After Harbhajan, his wife and their two daughters went out for a walk in the early hours of the day of murder, Parmeshwar reached the house on a motorcycle with two others and murdered the three persons. The assailants did not kill Janki Bai, the mother of Harish and Harbhajan, who was present in the house at that time. Her testimony against her elder son was also crucial in determining the guilt of the accused, Mr. Dwivedi said. 

The accused were pronounced guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and other provisions, he added. 

Pyarelal Kanwar, a Congress politician, was the Deputy Chief Minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh from 1993 to 1998. He passed away in 2011.