Sara Centelleghe killed at 18: life sentence for Badhan, 77 blows and disfigurement
Jashandeep Badhan sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Sara Centelleghe in Costa Volpino. The Assize Court: cruelty and gratuitous violence with 77 wounds inflicted in minutes.
The massacre and the sentence
Jashandeep Badhan, 19, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Sara Centelleghe, killed on the night of 26 October 2024 in her home in Costa Volpino. The Assize Court, presided over by Patrizia Ingrascì, in the sentence drafted by judge Roberto Palermo, reconstructed how the defendant not only took the life of the eighteen-year-old, but massacred her with 77 blows inflicted over the course of a few minutes. According to bergamo.corriere.it, the forensic doctor documented 40 wounds to the face and 18 to the scalp, inflicted in different ways: punches, skull against the floor, broken larynx, scissor cuts.
The Court stressed that Badhan had "the opportunity to stop, yet he did not". The exceptional number of blows and their methods revealed a "particular insensitivity towards the victim" and deliberate cruelty. The defendant exceeded "grossly" what would have been necessary to kill Sara, demonstrating ruthlessness especially in targeting the face and head — parts of the body that "constitute the constitutive fulcrum of a person's physical identity".
The motive and reconstruction of events
Badhan was seeking hashish that evening to calm himself, after having consumed alcohol, cocaine and Rivotril. He contacted Sara's seventeen-year-old friend — who was visiting the house — arranging an exchange: hashish in exchange for cocaine. As the friend left for the appointment, the defendant went into the house convinced that the girl had more hashish in her rucksack. He found Sara sleeping in her Hello Kitty pyjamas. He stunned her and continued striking her whilst searching for the drug without finding it.
Not content with his failure, he took her mobile phone — an act which the Court considered a direct connection to the murder, constituting an independent aggravating circumstance warranting life imprisonment. The wounds on Badhan's hands confirmed the suspicion of the carabinieri, who followed the bloodied fingerprints from the stairs of Sara's house to his residence. They found him in bed, in a confused state, a dirty gauze around his right hand.
The victim's self-defence and rejected mitigating circumstances
Sara attempted to defend herself desperately: her broken fingernails prove it. However, her reaction came late, was instinctive and in any case useless against an aggressor who was much stronger. The Court also highlighted the "impaired defence" of the victim: slight, alone and "in a situation of physiological lowering of vigilance" in sleep.
Generic mitigating circumstances — Badhan's young age, a person not yet fully formed, the difficulty in managing anger, the "traits of immaturity and fragility in impulse regulation" — proved insufficient in the face of the "exceptional seriousness of the facts". The consulting psychiatrist ruled out alterations of the examination of reality: despite a "non-specified" personality disorder, the defendant was capable of understanding and willing. Badhan's confession was not even full and clarifying, scattered with "I do not remember" and modifications to his account. In the courtroom he said: "I am sorry, I was not myself". At the preliminary investigation judge's interrogation he had provided a different version.
The robbery and the mobile phone
The link between the murder and the robbery of Sara's mobile phone eliminated the judges' margin of discretion regarding the maximum sentence, requested by prosecutor Raffaella Latorraca. The defence, represented by lawyer Roberto Grittini, appealed the conviction, arguing that a "short circuit" in the nineteen-year-old's brain caused an impulsive action. The hearing in the second instance has not yet been scheduled.
The seventeen-year-old who had agreed the drug exchange with Badhan was found still waiting for him outside the house at the time of the defendant's return, at approximately 1.16 am. Aware of what had happened inside, she disposed of the hashish by throwing it in a bin. She was herself investigated.
The context of the night
Sara at that moment was resting after studying for a law interrogation at the Ivan Piana secondary school in Lovere. Badhan's message to his friend arrived at 11.49 pm: "Are you downstairs?". He had already left eleven minutes earlier, passing through the boxes of the neighbouring condominium so as not to be seen. The Court did not believe his version of having searched for his friend inside without intent to rob: he wanted the hashish without giving anything in return. The alcohol and drugs consumed may have had "a disinhibiting effect", but they did not alter the lucidity necessary to carry out the criminal intent.
Source: Google News IT — Crime (it)