Gujarat: Six get life for kidnapping, murdering publisher

AHMEDABAD: A Gandhinagar court sentenced six persons to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering a publisher, Navin Shah, in July 2017.
Shah, the owner of Navneet Prakashan, was kidnapped on July 25, 2017, by eight persons who demanded a ransom of Rs 5 crore from his family. The kidnappers gagged Shah and fired an airgun to scare him. He was done to death when he put up resistance in the moving vehicle.
Gandhinagar police arrested six persons — Jignesh Bhavsar, Ramesh Patel, Shailesh Patel, Bankim Chandra Patel, Utpal Patel and Parin Thakkar. They were charged with murder, kidnapping, demanding ransom, destruction of evidence, criminal conspiracy and forgery.
Public prosecutor P D Vyas examined 139 witnesses to establish the guilt of the accused. Additional sessions judge D K Soni held all six accused guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 28,000 on each of the convicts.
Two accused in this case, Maunik Patel and Shankar Goswami, are still at large.
The murder case was cracked by then LCB inspector Jugal Purohit and a team under the supervision of then SP Virendra Singh Yadav. Purohit told TOI that it was a blind case from the start.
“After getting the missing person’s report, considering the seriousness of the case, multiple teams were pressed into action, and a description of the victim was circulated across the state. The body was found in Aravalli district about 150km from where he was taken. We then started to investigate all possible angles, and a phone number from which he got the last call provided the first clue,” said Purohit.
Over the course of investigation, officials found that Jignesh Bhavsar was earlier working for Shah and had been fired. He and the others planned to extort Rs 5 crore after Shah’s abduction. However, some team members tied the tape too tight on Shah’s face, causing his death even before they could make the ransom call. The accused, however, took the money and valuables from his person and disposed of other evidence.
Yadav said that in such cases, one or two persons get severe punishments, but this is an exemplary verdict where all those involved got life imprisonment. “It’s due to the watertight case built on evidence ranging from CCTV footage to Shah’s personal articles discarded by the group,” he said.