Woman, Charged With Murdering Husband, Wears Chemistry Professor Hat To Court
A chemistry assistant professor, charged with killing her husband through electrocution, made a court argument that surprised the Bench.
“You are charged with killing your husband by electrocution. What do you have to say regarding the post-mortem findings?” a Madhya Pradesh High Court judge asked a woman.
Collecting the arsenal at her command – her confidence and decades of experience teaching chemistry – 60-year-old Mamta Pathak fired back a response that left the Bench in dismay. “Sir, it is not possible to distinguish between thermal burn marks and electric burn marks in a post-mortem room,” she declared.
In front of the division bench consisting of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Devnarayan Mishra, Mamta Pathak, who is an assistant professor of chemistry, gave a brief master class. She provided a sophisticated explanation of how electric current behaves with tissues, citing the deposition of medical metal particles, acid-based separations in laboratory tests, and chemical reactions that only become certain to interpret after lab analysis. She said these observations cannot be visual.
This remarkable exchange during the hearing of the murder case against Mamata Pathak, has left legal circles stunned and attracted social media comments terming it as “one of the most unusual courtroom defenses in recent memory”.
On April 29, 2021 in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur, Mamta Pathak had apparently administered a heavy dose of sleeping pills to her husband Neeraj Pathak, a retired government doctor, before allegedly electrocuting him. She left for Jhansi with her son.
She insisted in police investigations that she had returned from Jhansi on May 1 and discovered her husband was dead. A voice recording of Neeraj Pathak saying his wife tortured him, and a driver’s account of her admitting to a “big mistake” followed. This reversed the case against her.
Additional evidence of a troubled marriage put further context into the case, with inquiries discovering that Mamta Pathak had filed a complaint of domestic abuse and alleging her husband had drugged her food. She subsequently withdrew the complaint.
A sessions court convicted her of premeditated murder and ordered her to serve a life term. She then petitioned the High Court and obtained bail last year.
Following the fourth and final hearing on April 29, the Bench has reserved its verdict. Mamta Pathak is still out on bail.
