Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 18 (IANS): A 70-year-old widow has been awarded life imprisonment, 11 years after she allegedly killed the man who allegedly tried to rape her daughter.

Bulandshahr additional sessions court's judge Rajeshwar Shukla, said that the woman "did not have to hit the deceased multiple times with an axe to stop the rape bid as even small force could have been deployed".

The court concluded that the act was "honour killing" and a "planned murder".

The order further stated that the accused, Kasturi Devi, was found guilty of killing Praveen Kumar, who was 20 years old at the time of the incident that took place on July 31, 2010.

Elaborating on the sequence of events, the court order mentioned that the woman, who was 59 at that time, had approached the Anupshahr police station in Bulandshahr and confessed to the murder.

"As per the information given to court by police, Kasturi went to the cops and told them that she had killed Praveen who reached her house at midnight and grabbed her 20-year-old daughter. On seeing her daughter being sexually assaulted, Kasturi picked an axe lying in the corner of the terrace and hit the deceased causing his death," the court order said.

In the trial that took 11 years to complete and in the intervening period, the woman's daughter got married and has children.

The woman's son and her daughter, who were eyewitnesses in the matter, had maintained it was a rape bid and that their mother killed the deceased in anger.