Mumbai: A sessions court Monday awarded life sentence to a man in a murder case. The court also sentenced his driver to five years of imprisonment for helping the accused throw the body from their car. However, the court acquitted the brother of the convict and their accomplice from all charges. The convicts used to work as local moneylenders and killed an aide of a local builder for outstanding dues.
Chief public prosecutor Jaising Desai said that the case depended on circumstantial evidence, and witnesses like a friend of the deceased, Mari Ramgan Devendra who last saw the deceased going with the Madurai alias Madra Devendra Mariappan, the wife and mother-in-law of the deceased who gave details of monetary transactions between the parties, and the recovery of the knife used in the crime and the blood-stained cloth of the accused that helped the prosecution prove the case against the convicts.
The prosecution examined a total 23 witnesses to prove that Mariappan killed 35-year-old deceased in his Scorpio car at around 5pm near Juhu Galli. The case was registered after people found an injured Mari near the Kaifi Azmi garden and rushed him to a nearby hospital only to have the doctors declare him brought dead. Mari had sustained 17 to 18 injuries to his body.
However, the statement of the wife of the deceased that her husband had a monetary dispute with the accused and that one of the friends of the deceased saw him going with the accused in their car led the police to the accused the same day.
Judge Shayana Patil convicted Mariappan for murder but held that though the driver Devendra was present in the same car, he had not actively participated in the murder. The Judge held that Devendra helped his employer dump the body and hence, sentenced him to five years of rigorous imprisonment.
The Judge acquitted Babu Mandal and Silva Devendra from all charges.
