Four get life imprisonment for kidnapping, murdering a man

Kanpur: Four persons were convicted by the Additional sessions judge Avanish Kumar on Saturday sentenced four persons to life imprisonment and with a fine of Rs 25,000 on each for kidnapping, murder and destroying evidence.
Those convicted by the court were Shiv Singh, Rama Shankar Singh, Raghubir Singh and Yogendra Singh, all residents of Madwai village under Akbarpur police station.
The court in its order observed that the accused had kidnapped and murdered a man and destroyed the evidence.
Though the offence is heinous but does not come under the ambit of rarest of rare case, therefore, they are being sentenced to life imprisonment along with fine, the court observed in its order. If they fail to pay the fine then they will have to undergo one more year in prison, the court stated in the order
Earlier, on the point of quantum of sentence, ADGC Jitendra Kumar Pandey pleaded that as the accused had kidnapped a man and murdered him and also tried to destroy the evidence, therefore, they should be awarded harsh punishment.
On the other hand, the defence counsel requested to take a lenient view in awarding punishment to the accused as they did not have any criminal history and it was their first offence.
According to the ADGC, Prem Babu, a resident of Madwai village in Akbarpur tehsil in his complaint lodged a report at Armapur police station on April 17, 2002 stated therein that his brother Nahar Singh, who was a milk vendor, was kidnapped on April 6, 202 by some persons from Vijay Nagar Nullah under Armapur police station, and its report was lodged on April 8, 2002.
One of his relatives informed him on April 17, 2002 that the kidnappers after killing his brother Nahar Singh had thrown his body in the Gubar forest. The relative identified the dead body which had been eaten by animals. The police after conducting an investigation into the case nabbed the accused, the ADGC said.
One of the witnesses had seen the accused forcibly taking Nahar Singh at the Vijay Nagar crossing, the ADGC said. Two other witnesses in their evidence stated that they had seen the accused and Nahar Singh going in a Bolero car near Rajpur. They said since Singh and the accused were milk vendors, the reason behind the murder was election rivalry during the election of Milk Cooperative Committee, the DGC added.