Jain murder: lifer sought for Riyaz Siddiqui

Mumbai: Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam on Friday sought a life sentence for Riyaz Siddiqui in the 1995 murder case of builder Pradeep Jain. The court has already convicted and sentenced Abu Salem and his driver Mehdi Hassan to life imprisonment in this case. Siddiqui’s trial was separated from others because at the initial stage he turned approver in the case but he turned hostile during his testimony.

On Friday, Mr Nikam argued before special TADA court judge G.A. Sanap that the case does not fall under the ‘rarest of rare’ and hence the prosecution is seeking life imprisonment for Siddiqui.

Since there are options of only life and death penalty for murder convicts, when the judge asked Siddiqui if he wanted to say anything, he said he leaves it to court.

While convicting Siddiqui, judge Sanap had observed that on the basis of the concrete and cogent evidence the prosecution has proved that Siddiqui along with convicted accused Salem, Mehendi, Subhash Bind and Shekhar Kadam, an approver and wanted accused including underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Anees, conspired to strike
terror in minds of builder community and to compel the Jain brothers to surrender their rights over ‘Kol Dongri property’ so that they could derive ‘huge profit by illegal means’.

 The judge held that the prosecution has further proved that Siddiqui was an integral part of the criminal conspiracy in which Jain was shot dead on March 7, 1995.