The Kerala High Court on Thursday sentenced a father and stepmother to life imprisonment for the murder of a six-year-old girl, holding that their “brutal and sustained acts of cruelty” over several months directly caused the girl’s death in 2013.

A division bench of Justices Raja Vijayaraghavan V and K V Jayakumar convicted Subramanian Namboodiri and Ramla Begum alias Devaki Antharjanam under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, setting aside their 2016 acquittal by a sessions court.

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The high court described the trial court’s earlier reasoning as “manifestly untenable, palpably erroneous, and based on a misapplication of the settled principles of criminal law.”

The bench recorded that the couple’s actions included severe beatings, pouring of boiling

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