5 held guilty for historian Papiya Ghosh's murder

Patna: All five accused in the murder of a prominent history professor in Patna were held guilty by a court on Thursday.

Patna University professor Papiya Ghosh and her maid, Malti Devi, were stabbed to death at Ghosh’s residence in the posh Pataliputra colony on December 2, 2006.

The case hit national headlines when Papiya’s sister Tuktuk Ghose, an IAS officer on special duty with Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee took up the case to the Prime Minister’s office.

It drew national outrage and even rocked the Bihar Assembly when opposition parties disrupted the proceedings initially.

The five accused, Shanker Shah, Ashish Kumar, Manohar Kumar, Anil and Ramchander Mehto, were being tried by a fast track court for the last two years. The quantum of punishment will be declared by the court on Friday.

Police arrested these accused from Balupar locality in Digha police station limits of the state capital on December 16, 2006. They later confessed to their crime.