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NEW DELHI,Tuesday (AFP) India's main opposition Congress suffered a body blow ahead of crucial polls when a court convicted a former party leader of killing his wife and burning her body in an open-air barbecue.

Additional Sessions Judge G. P. Thareja convicted former Congress politician Sushil Sharma on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy and the destruction of evidence following the July 2, 1995 murder of his wife Naina Sahni. Sharma, currently in prison, is charged with shooting his then 29-year-old wife, a pilot, on suspicion of infidelity, chopping up the corpse and shoving it into the buttered grill at the Baghiya restaurant to wipe out evidence.

The gamble did not work as the police got a scent of the grisly crime and raided the restaurant, owned by a friend of Sharma, and dug out charred body parts later identified as Sahni's from the still-blazing Indian-style oven.

Experts said the charges could mean the death sentence for Sharma, who was president of the prestigious youth chapter of the Congress party when he committed the crime. Judge Thareja is likely to hand down punishment to Sharma and to one of his accomplices on Wednesday. The verdict ends a marathon trial involving 300 separate sittings and cross-examination of more than 100 witnesses.

Keshav Kumar, Sharma's friend and owner of the restaurant, was convicted of plotting with the politician to dispose of Sahni's corpse.

The judge, however, acquitted three other people who had been arrested on charges of harbouring Sharma while he was on the run for a month after the crime was committed in the heart of New Delhi.

Thareja ordered the criminal prosecution of a senior bureaucrat of the western state of Gujarat on charges of sheltering Sharma during the nationwide manhunt. "Crime never pays and we always believed that our case against him was solid," Joint Police Commissioner Maxwell Pereira, who hunted down Sharma, told AFP just after the verdict.

The police say Sharma, who was opposed to publicising his marriage to former pilot Sahni, on the fateful night redialled a number his wife was talking to on the telephone and then shot her three times in the belief the person on the other end was her lover. The verdict is widely seen as a blow to the Congress party, which is gearing up for provincial polls in four states and in the New Delhi legislature next month, offering a clean and corruption-free administration.

"This could not have happened at a worse time because it is we who have pledged to fight against crime against women," said a senior politician from the Congress party, which ruled the New Delhi city legislature.

"There is no doubt the (ruling) BJP will use the Sushil Sharma case to hurt the Congress," warned political analyst Anand Ojha.

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