Life term instead of death for Manjunath’s killer

LUCKNOW - The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court Friday commuted the death sentence to the murderer of Indian Oil Corporation executive S. Manjunath to that of life imprisonment, and acquitted two of the other seven convicted in the case.

A division bench of Justice K.K. Misra and Justice Dharam Veer Sharma commuted the death sentence awarded by the trial court to petrol pump owner Pawan Kumar Mittal alias Monu Mittal to that of life imprisonment.

Manjunath was murdered by Mittal and some others four years ago in the state’s Lakhimpur-Kheri district, about 150 Km from here.

Terming the murder as “pre-determined and planned”, the trial court of district judge S.M.A. Abdi had convicted all the eight accused. While Mittal, the key accused, was to be “hanged to death”, the other seven, charged with criminal conspiracy, were sentenced to life terms.

Upholding the convictions of six of the eight accused including Mittal, the high court however commuted the death sentence to Mittal into a life term and also acquitted two - Rajiv Awasthi and Harish Misra - holding that “nothing incriminating was recovered from them”.

The life terms to five other accused - Devesh Agnihotri, Rakesh Anand, Vivek Sharma, Shivesh Giri and Rajesh Sharma - were upheld.

Unhappy with the verdict, public prosecutor O.P. Srivastava said he will appeal to the apex court for revival of the death sentence.

Senior counsel I.B. Singh, who had been arguing the case on behalf of the Manjunath Trust, said it seemed that the high court did not consider this a “rarest of the rare case” to uphold the death sentence on Monu Mittal.

Relieved over the commutation of the death sentence into a life term, defence counsel Ranvijay Singh said he would also appeal to the Supreme Court in the hope of bringing some more relief to the accused.

Manjunath, an alumni of the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow (IIM-L) who had turned down many lucrative offers from the private sector and chose to take up his first assignment with India’s largest public sector oil company, was killed Nov 19, 2005, after he refused to turn a blind eye to the rampant adulteration and under-weighing of fuel supplies in the district and threatened to expose the scam.

His body was recovered from a car in Maholi area in the neighbouring Sitapur district the next day.

The issue drew loud public outcry following which the case was entrusted to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which succeeded in bringing the culprits to book.