В Гhaziabad суд приговорил к пожизненному заключению преступника за похищение и убийство торговца 17 лет назад

Ghaziabad: A Meerut man who had a criminal past has been sentenced to life in prison for abducting and killing a trader who owned a shop in the city’s Loha Mandi and his driver 17 years ago. One of the other accused was acquitted of murder and abduction charges but was sentenced to three years in prison for stealing from the trader. An FIR had been registered at the Kavinagar police station on Dec 23, 2009, after Vijay Shankar Agarwal told the cops that his father Devishankar Agrawal had left their shop in Loha Mandi with his driver Sunil the previous night but never returned home. When he contacted Sunil’s family the next day, they told him that two bodies had been found in the forest of Kadarabad and they had been identified as those of Sunil and his father. But Rs 70,000 that Agarwal had with him had been looted. His watch and ring had also been stolen. The FIR was filed against unidentified persons under sections 364 (abduction for murder), 302 (murder), and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt while attempting robbery) of the IPC. Since Sunil belonged to the Scheduled Castes, charges under section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were also added. When police interrogated people from the mandi, another shop owner, Dheer Singh, said he had seen two men in a Santro follow Agarwal’s Skoda Fabia. Another eyewitness claimed that he had seen a history-sheeter, Ajayraj alias Don, driving the Skoda while Agarwal sat on the back seat. The Santro, he alleged, was driven behind by another criminal, Ankit Sharma. Through intelligence inputs and surveillance, police named four people — Ajayraj, Ankit Sharma, Sandeep and Jogendra — as the prime suspects. Ankit Sharma was killed in a gunfight, but Ajayraj and Sandeep were eventually arrested. Police recovered Agarwal’s watch and ring from Sandeep. Jogendra, however, remained absconding, and the cops separated his file while submitting a chargesheet against Ajayraj and Sandeep on Aug 23, 2010. The court framed charges against the duo on Jan 25, 2014, under IPC sections and Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST Act. Both denied the charges and sought to be tried. Section 411 of the IPC (dishonestly receiving stolen property) was added to the charges. Defence argued that if any witness had seen the deceased with Ajayraj right before the incident, why he had not informed the deceased’s family or the police. Special public prosecutors Akhilesh Kumar and Rajni Kanta argued that Dheer Singh had said accused Ajayraj and Ankit were wanted criminals, so he did not dare to name them immediately. “Ajayraj was arrested on Jan 3, 2010 and Singh revealed Ajayraj’s name to the police during the arrest process,” they explained. The court relied on the time of death, as recorded by the postmortem report and corroborated by the physician. It matched the time, almost an hour after Agarwal and Sunil had left the shop at Loha Mandi. Additional sessions judge Jeetendra Mishra questioned Ajayraj’s whereabouts between 9 and 10 pm on Dec 22, 2009. “He had ample opportunity to present his own explanation to the court and explain where the deceased were during that one hour. However, no such attempt was made by Ajayraj,” he said. In the absence of that testimony, the judge said, “The prosecution has succeeded in proving that Ajayraj abducted the deceased Devishankar Agrawal and his driver Sunil with the intent to murder them. He inflicted injuries with the intent to commit robbery, and during this time, he shot the deceased in the head and killed them.” He declared Ajayraj alias Don guilty under Sections 364 (abduction for murder), 302 (murder), and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt while attempting robbery) of the IPC, awarding a life term with a cumulative fine of Rs 20,000, while his associate Sandeep was convicted under Section 411 of the IPC only. They were both also acquitted of the charges under section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST Act. “The prosecution has succeeded in proving that accused Ajayraj abducted the deceased Devishankar Agrawal and his driver Sunil, with the intent to murder them. He inflicted injuries with the intent to commit robbery, and during this time, he shot the deceased in the head and killed them. The prosecution has proven that Rs 70,000 was looted. Therefore, the prosecution has succeeded in proving the charges against accused Ajayraj under Sections 364, 302, and 394 of the IPC. As for Section 411 of the IPC, this charge was primarily framed against accused Sandeep. Therefore, the charge under Section 411 was not proved against Ajayraj,” the court held.