MUMBAI, Oct. 29 -- The Bombay High Court recently reduced the life sentence of a woman convicted of killing her alleged rapist to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment, holding that she acted under grave provocation and lost self-control. A division bench of justice Urmila Joshi Phalke and justice Nandesh S. Deshpande observed that the woman had no intention to kill the man and modified her conviction from murder to culpable homicide not amounting to murder. According to the prosecution, the case dates back to 2004, when the 22-year-old woman fatally attacked the man who had allegedly raped her after promising marriage and was pressuring her to withdraw the pending rape case. He visited her Washim home on June 22, 2004, demanding that she withdraw the complaint. Enraged by his continued harassment, she attacked him with a razor and a pestle. The man succumbed to his injuries later, resulting in the murder case against her. Subsequently, a trial court convicted her of murder and sentenced her to life imprisonment in 2005. Challenging the verdict, she argued before the high court that the conviction was based solely on her confession in the FIR, which is inadmissible under the Evidence Act. Senior advocate R. L. Khapre, appearing for the woman, contended that her extra-judicial confession was weak evidence and insufficient for conviction, while the additional public prosecutor M. J. Khan argued that circumstantial and medical evidence that established her guilt. During the hearing on October 17, the court held that the case was an exception as it was committed under grave and sudden provocation. "The repeated harassment to withdraw the rape case resulted in the woman losing her self-control and attacking the deceased with weapons available in her house," the court observed, altering her conviction to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and reduced her sentence to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment....