Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, May 24

People will finally heave a sigh of relief after Ongole District Court in Andhra Pradesh today sentenced notorious highway serial killer Munna and 10 other gang members to death.

The gang used to stop vehicles on highways posing as police officers and then kill the occupants. The court found 18 persons guilty for being involved in four such cases in 2018. Eleven have been sentenced to death and the rest have got life term or jail for shorter duration.

All the accused were found guilty of murdering seven persons in four cases in Ongole. After killing lorry driver Ramasekhar and cleaner Perumal Subramani near Ulavapadu, the gang sold the 21.7 tonnes of iron in the lorry to a leading merchant in Guntur.

The bodies of the driver and cleaner from Tamil Nadu were packed in gunny bags and buried on the banks of Gundlakamma river near Parkasham in Andhra Pradesh.

The police started on an investigative trail from Durgapur in West Bengal and, in the process, found out the involvement of the gang headed Syed Abdul Samad, alias Munna, operating in Ongole.

During the trial, the police told the court that Munna tried to make preparations to flee the country. However, before he could do so, the police arrested him in the farmhouse of a former MLA in Karnataka and brought him to Ongole.