Kaithal businessman murder: jail officer gets life among 8

Setting aside the acquittal orders of the Kaithal district court, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday awarded rigorous imprisonment for life to eight convicts, including Kaithal jail deputy superintendent Dharambir Malik in a case of Rs 50-lakh extortion and murder of Kaithal businessman Narinder Arora in 2006.

Setting aside the acquittal orders of the Kaithal district court, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday awarded rigorous imprisonment for life to eight convicts, including Kaithal jail deputy superintendent Dharambir Malik in a case of `50-lakh extortion and murder of Kaithal businessman Narinder Arora in 2006.

HT Image

The other convicts are Surinder Singh, Surinder Pehalwan, Joginder Singh, Baljeet Singh, Anil, Darshan Singh and Naresh. The division bench comprising justices Hemant Gupta and Fateh Deep Singh, while allowing the Haryana government's appeal against the trial court judgment of 2009, convicted the eight accused under Sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The court has ordered for forwarding of arrest warrants of convicts to the Kaithal chief judicial magistrate. The court said the roles of the accused had been well elaborated in the evidence of the prosecution that the trial court had lost sight of to fall into an error by misconstruing and misreading the evidence proved on record.

On March 17, 2006, Kaithal businessman Narinder Arora was shot in the head from a pistol by two motorcycle-borne boys who had not been paid Rs 50-lakh. Arora had died on way to the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.