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A sessions court in Mumbai has sentenced five men to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering a Mumbai-based builder over a property deal in April 2012.
The builder, Nitin Dhakan, was kidnapped from the Borivali area of suburban Mumbai on April 26, 2012.
A day after Dhakan went missing, his wife lodged a complaint with the local police. Meanwhile, the victim’s brother-in-law received information that Dhakan’s car had met with an accident on a road. But when he visited the spot, Dhakan was not found.
Subsequently, Dhakan’s wife lodged a kidnapping case, the prosecution said.
In June 2012, the police arrested six men, real estate broker Gopal Pandey, Harun Shaikh, Birbal Singh, Brijesh Mishra, Abhijeet Bhosale and Sachin Chorge, in connection with the case. The case had been handed over to the elite Crime Branch.
During questioning, the accused revealed that Dhakan was beaten to death in a forest in neighbouring Palghar district of Maharashtra and his body was set on fire using petrol. Later, the police recovered the body parts of Dhakan at the spot.
Special Public Prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade was appointed by the state government in the case and a total of 31 witnesses were examined during the trial. The main accused, Pandey, died pending the trial.
The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence such as DNA retrieved from the skull, which matched with the victim’s mother.
“The accused used a mobile phone SIM card of the builder to mislead his relatives by trying to make them believe that he had met with an accident. They tried to create an impression the victim was alive, while the fact is that he was already murdered,” Bagade said.
The detailed judgment in the case was yet to be made available.
However, on Wednesday, Judge MH Pathan read out the operative part of the order in the court which said that Shaikh, Singh, Mishra, Bhosale and Chorge were convicted for the offence punishable under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment.
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