JAIPUR: The high court on Monday suspended the death sentence of the main accused in the abduction and murder case of a seven-year old boy called Rudraksh in Kota in 2014 and ordered the trial court to conduct a re-trial.
The division bench of Justice M N Bhandari and D C Somani issued the order on an appeal against the sentence by the convict Ankur Padia and the death reference by the state government.
The appellant said the accused was not given sufficient opportunity to present documents in the trial court and so should be given an opportunity.
The Special SC/ST court in Kota had given death sentence to main accused Ankur Padia and life term to his elder brother Anup Padia in February 26 this year. The other two accomplices Mahaveer Sharma and Karanjeet Singh were given four and two-year sentences, respectively along with penalties.
Ankur Padia had kidnapped seven-year-old Rudraksh, son of a bank manager, from a park in Talwandi area near his house in Kota city on October 9, 2014. The abductors had demanded a ransom of Rs 2 crore from the boy’s parents for his release.
After the boy’s parents informed the Kota city police about the abduction, police recovered the victim’s body from a canal in Jakhmund in Bundi district the next day. Police arrested the main accused Ankur Padia and his elder brother, Anoop from Lucknow in
Uttar Pradesh on October 27, 2014.
Police also arrested Padia’s servant Mahaveer Sharma for helping the accused while Karanjeet Singh, a resident of Delhi, was also arrested for selling a fake mobile SIM card to the accused.
Representative image
