Fifteen years in prison for killing pregnant Amsterdam student, disposing of body

The Noord-Holland court sentenced 42-year-old Manodj B. to 15 years in prison for killing 22-year-old Sumanta Bansi and disposing of her body. The Amsterdam student was nine weeks pregnant when she disappeared in 2018. Her body still hasn’t been found.

Sumanta disappeared without a trace on 18 February 2018. She was pregnant for the second time with Manodj B.’s child. She lived with him and his family in Hoorn and had a secret relationship with him, a married man. In a previous pregnancy, the family convinced her to get an abortion. This time she was determined to keep the child.

The court considers it implausible that Sumanta left voluntarily and accepted the Prosecutor’s conclusion that the young woman had been killed. The authorities listened in on B.’s phone conversations and heard him say that he killed her “through the heart.”

During the investigation, B. did not seem concerned about Sumanta’s disappearance and actively tried to hinder the police investigation, the court said. He made various statements about Sumanta’s disappearance and whereabouts and tried to influence what witnesses said to the police.

“The court considers it proven that the suspect used violence against Sumanta, resulting in her death. He then disposed of her body to hide his crime and the cause of her death,” the court said.

The court called it damning that he took the life of a young pregnant woman and then refused to say what happened to her and hindered the police investigation into her disappearance. The investigation only started nine months after Sumantha disappeared because B. kept lying to her family in Suriname about where she was.

The sentence of 15 years in prison is equal to what the Public Prosecutor demanded. The fact that Sumanta’s parents still don’t know what happened to their daughter “weighed heavily in the sentencing,” the court said.

B.’s father, 65-year-old Dwarka B., was also a suspect in this case, but he was acquitted at the Prosecutor’s request because there wasn’t enough evidence against him.