Facebook friend gets life for 2016 murder of West Bengal girl

CHINSURAH: Bhopal resident Udayan Das, 32, who strangled his Facebook friend and Bankura girl Akanksha Sharma to death in 2016, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday, a day after he was convicted of her murder.
Bankura fast-track court judge Suresh Biswakarma pronounced the sentence under Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC. Udayan was convicted by the same court on Tuesday after he confessed to killing Akanksha, then 28, at his Bhopal home on July 15 that year, packing her body into a trunk and burying it on the premises.His lawyer, Abhishek Biswas, said they would appeal against the sentence.
Udayan is also an accused in the 2010 murder of his parents at their ancestral home in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, where he then buried their bodies.
According to police, Udayan met Akanksha, daughter of a banker, on Facebook in 2015. He claimed he worked for the UN and was posted in the US. Once their friendship grew, he promised her a job with Unicef and asked her to meet him in Bhopal. Akanksha left home on June 23, 2016, and told her parents she would proceed to the US directly from Bhopal. Akanksha later realised she had been tricked.
The chargesheet in the murder case states that Udayan told Akanksha how he had killed his well-to-do parents, sold their property in Raipur and bought the luxurious house in Bhopal. She also found out that he never worked with the UN.
Udayan strangled Akanksha after she threatened to tell her parents the truth about him. He had told a forensic expert how he hired a mason to mix concrete and then spent next two days entombing the body in a trunk. He had told police he copied the process from the film, ‘The Devil’s Knot’.
Udayan initially texted her parents from her mobile phone so as to not arouse their suspicion. The messages said she had reached the US and taken up the job with Unicef.
After Akanksha went incommunicado, her parents lodged a missing diary with Bankura Sadar police on December 5, 2016. Cops traced her mobile to Bhopal. On January 5, 2017, her father Shivendra Narayan Sharma filed an abduction complaint against Udayan and he was arrested from Bhopal on February 1 that year.
During interrogation, Udayan confessed to murder and attempt to destroy evidence. Akanksha’s remains were exhumed from his residential premises. He was brought to Bankura and chargesheeted.
He later admitted to killing his parents, Birendra Kumar Das and Indrani Das, in 2010. Deendayal Upadhyaynagar police in Raipur lodged a double murder case and his parents’ remains were exhumed. That case is pending.