7 years later, 4 get life sentence for stabbing Shiv Sena worker to death in Mumbai

MUMBAI: The Dindoshi sessions court on Thursday convicted four men and sentenced them to life imprisonment for killing a local Shiv Sena functionary, Ramesh Jadhav, near his Malad (E) residence in 2014.
The court acquitted a woman, while one more accused, a juvenile-in-conflict-with-law, has his case pending for trial before the juvenile justice board.

The murder had led to rioting in the area and a case against the alleged rioters is pending before the court.
The case registered by Dindoshi police was that the accused had conspired to murder Jadhav and executed the plan by stabbing him in a scuffle in a chawl in Malad (E) on October 21, 2014. While five of the accused, including the minor, were arrested the next day, the woman managed to secure anticipatory bail.
The complainant, Jadhav’s cousin, said Sohail Ansari, Yusuf Sazida, Imran Kazi and the minor were assaulting his neighbour and when he tried to intervene, they attacked him too. He then called Jadhav for help. The cousin said when Jadhav tried to intervene, Ansari held him while Yusuf and Kazi pushed him against a wall. He claimed that Ansari stabbed Jadhav on his chest, face and hand, while another accused Gullu Sazida stabbed him with a ‘gupti’ on the thigh. Jadhav succumbed to the injuries.
The complainant’s lawyer, Kaushik Mhatre, in written submissions to the court said it was a case based on direct eyewitnesses’ accounts and in all, 20 witnesses were examined to prove the prosecution case. He said the police collected metal pipes with bloodstains from the spot and Gullu voluntarily had disclosed where the “weapon (gupti) and blood-stained clothes were concealed”. The police found them in a bush on a building construction site.
Avinash Rasal was appointed special public prosecutor, but local public prosecutors Ravindra Savle and Mhatre argued for the complainant. They said three eyewitnesses’ accounts and th-em identifying the accused, along with CCTV footage and forensic report, were su-fficient to prove their guilt.
Defence lawyer Bhanudas Jagtap argued that Jadhav had fallen from the first-floor of his building and the injury was not caused by sta-bbing. He examined a defence witness who said he heard someone fall and then saw a few men running tow-ards Jadhav who had fallen from the first floor and an ir-on rod had pierced his thigh.
The witness, a brother of one of the convicts, deposed that he and two accused, including Gullu, took Jadhav to hospital. But in his cross-examination, he could not show any hospital entry or CCTV footage and prosecution said he was not a reliable witness as he was trying to get acquittal for his brother. The story of a fall is not supported by medical evidence, said the prosecution.