Shimla: A Himachal Pradesh court Wednesday awarded the death penalty to three people in the sensational murder case of a four-year-old Yug Gupta boy in 2014, whose skeletal remains were found in a water tank more than two years after his death.
Sessions court judge Virender Singh had held Chander Sharma, Tajender Pal Singh and Vikrant Bakshi guilty of kidnapping, murder and conspiracy on August 6. The court had recorded the statements of the parents of the accused on August 21 before pronouncing the sentencing.
The four-year-old boy, son of a businessman, was kidnapped from outside his house in Ram Bazaar in Shimla four years ago on June 14 by his neighbor Chander Sharma, who had lured him with chocolates.
The accused had kept the boy naked, tortured him and forced him to consume liquor for seven days. He was later dumped alive in a water storage tank seven days after the abduction, even before the first ransom call was made to his parents.
The accused had sent a letter demanding a ransom of Rs 3.6 crore from the child’s father on June 27, six days after the boy had died. Three more ransom letters were received subsequently.
Yug's killing had sent shocked-waves across Shimla and enraged residents took out processions and candle marches to express their rage.
Two years after the Shimla Police failed to make any headway, the case was handed over to CID who recovered the minor boy’s skeletal remains from the Shimla Municipal Corporation’s water storage tank in Kelston area on August 21, 2016. Some civic body employees found his skeleton while cleaning the tank after a jaundice outbreak in the city.
The next day the police announced that the three men had been arrested for the murder.
Police investigations had revealed that Chander had even taken part in protests and helped search for the child to avoid suspicion. Investigators had earlier said he was the one who had insisted on killing the boy as the child knew him while Tejender and Vikrant were initially opposed to the idea.
Public prosecutor Randip Singh Parmar said the statements of total 105 witnesses were recorded in this case. When the sessions court pronounced the sentence, Yug's father, Gupta, was present in the courtroom.
He said the capital punishment for the accused strengthened his faith in the judiciary. "They had committed rare of rarest crime by kidnapping and drowning my four year old son alive in the water tank after forcibly administering liquor."
Chander Sharma, Tajender Singh and Vikrant Bakshi were booked under Sections 302 (murder), 201 (disappearance of evidence/false information), 342 (wrongful confinement), 364A (kidnapping for ransom) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
Comments
0 comment