Mumbai, Oct 1 : The Bombay High Court upheld the death penalty awarded to a Kolhapur man who brutally killed his mother and then ate her organs, in a diabolic crime that came to light in 2017, here on Tuesday.

Terming it a 'rarest of rare case', a division bench comprising Justice Revati Mohite Dere and Justice Prithviraj Chavan pronounced their ruling before the open court where the convict-appellant Sunil Kuchkoravi was produced in a video conference.

'This is a rarest of rare cases wherein the appellant (Kuchkoravi) not only killed his mother but removed her organs like heart, brain, etc and was about to cook the same on a stove. This is cannibalism. Thus, we have upheld your death sentence, as awarded to you by the Sessions Court,' the court said, confirming the verdict of the lower court.

Enraged after being denied money to buy liquor, Kuchkoravi had murdered his 63-year-old mother, Yellama R. Kuchkorav on August 28, 2017, and was planning to indulge in more brutality on her body when a kid from the neighbourhood saw him standing near her bloodied body.

He was covered with bloodstains, and the neighbours immediately informed the Kolhapur Police which came and arrested him, though by then, he had allegedly consumed some of the cooked body parts, even as the case created a huge media sensation at that time.

After the trial, a Sessions Court in July 2021 found Kuchkoravi guilty of the heinous crimes, convicted and sentenced him to death while noting that 'the incident has shaken the collective conscience of the society', and the gory case symbolised extreme brutality and shamelessness.

At the time of his arrest, Kuchkoravi had already extracted his mother's heart, brain, liver, kidneys and intestines and was cooking them in a vessel, and he had already cooked her ribs, on which the court observed: 'This is a case of cannibalism'.

The high court also expressed concerns, that considering his 'cannibalism' tendencies, if the convict was given life imprisonment, he might attempt to commit a similar crime in jail.

Lodged in the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune, Kuchkoravi had challenged the Kolhapur Sessions Court verdict awarding him the death penalty, which was ratified by the Bombay High Court on Tuesday.

/IANS