16 get life for murder of bar manager

THANE: Sixteen people, who had been found guilty of murdering a country liquor bar manager in 2012, were awarded life imprisonment by the district court at Kalyan.
Additional sessions judge NM Waghmare found all Kaka Shankar Patil (64), his sons Sandeep (39) and Anil (27), and 13 others guilty under sections for murder, rioting, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, and provisions of the Arms Act.

Government pleader Sangita Phad said that an old dispute over land led to the murder of shop manager Vikas Patil. Vikas and Kaka Shankar had been at logger heads.

Vikas had been attacked by Kaka Shankar and others on many occasions in the past. On October 03, 2012, around 6.30am, Patil was opening the door of the country liquor bar when the 16 men armed with swords and knives attacked him. The men stabbed him 26 times. “His head was severed. The killing was witnessed by an ice cream seller and a auto driver,” the prosecution said.

The accused had meticulously hatched the conspiracy to eliminate the victim. “After killing the victim, the accused fled in two vans to a farmhouse and threw away their cellphones and weapons in a river,” said the prosecutor.

Twenty-one witnesses testified in court and Vikas’s widow deposed how Kaka Shankar and others harassed them over the land dispute and that they had registered cases against them. The police found the blood-stained clothes of the accused in the farmhouse. The blood type on the clothes and the vans matched. In his order, the judge observed that the prosecution has proved all the charges against the accused beyond all doubts.