The sessions court on Friday awarded life sentence to 13 convicted policemen, along with eight others in the 2006 fake encounter of Ram Narayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiyya, an alleged aide of underworld don Chhota Rajan.
While Justice V.D. Jadhwar had convicted senior inspector Pradip Suryawanshi, Tanaji Desai and Dilip Palande for murder, others were convicted under Section 302 read with Section 109 read with Section 120 (b) for abetment and criminal conspiracy.
Encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, who has over 100 encounters to his name, was one of the 22 accused in the case. However, the court had acquitted him of all the charges on July 5.
The prosecution had sought death penalty for all the policemen, including two others. They had argued that all of them had played an active role in the killing. The defence, however, argued that capital punishment should be avoided since the conviction of the accused is based on circumstantial evidence and special reasons are required for awarding death.
“I am not at all happy with the sentencing of punishment. In view of Justice Katju’s order, fake encounters deserve a harsher punishment. The clearly states fake encounters mean that protectors have become predators. Policemen who are law enforcers, take the law in their own hand and death sentence is the only sentence that they deserve,” special public prosecutor Vidya Kasle told The Asian Age.
“As per my knowledge, this is the first case where so many policemen have been convicted. This judgment proves that law never makes any exceptions. Awarding of life sentence to all the convicted persons has been justified by the court,” prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said.
As per the prosecution, on November 11, 2006, a police team had picked up Lakhan from Vashi on suspicion that he was a Chhota Rajan gang member, along with one Anil Bheda.
It was also alleged that Bheda was initially detained at DN Nagar police station in Versova and was later shifted to Kolhapur. He was subsequently brought back to Mumbai and was detained for about a month.
On November 15 the same year, Lakhan’s brother advocate Ram-prasad Gupta moved the Bombay high court alleging that the encounter was “fake”.