A local court in Telangana’s Warangal district on Wednesday sentenced a 25-year old migrant worker from Bihar to death for allegedly murdering nine other migrant labourers in May this year in a bid to cover up another murder he had committed earlier.
Warangal first additional district court judge Jaya Kumar delivered his judgement, awarding a death sentence to accused Sanjay Kumar Yadav for the gruesome killings, including six members of a family on May 20.
The Warangal police booked Yadav under seven sections of the Indian Penal Code and filed the charge sheet within 25 days of the FIR being registered. Yadav confessed to the crime during the trial. In all, the court cross-examined 98 people, including 68 witnesses, before pronouncing the judgement.
The mass murders that took place at Gorrekunta village of Geesugonda block on the outskirts of Warangal town created a sensation in Telangana. On May 20, the police recovered nine bodies from an abandoned well.
Warangal city police commissioner V Ravinder said the deceased were identified as Md Maqsood (55), his wife Nisha (48), sons Shahabad Alam (21) and Sohail Alam (18), daughter Bushra (20) and her three-year-old son Shoaib (all from the same family from West Bengal), Sriram (21) and Shyam (22) from Bihar, besides Shakil (30) from Tripura.
All the elders were working in a gunny bag manufacturing unit at Geesugonda and staying in the same company premises since the enforcement of lockdown in March. The police initially thought they had died by mass suicide owing to financial constraints or some other family reasons.
{{/usCountry}}All the elders were working in a gunny bag manufacturing unit at Geesugonda and staying in the same company premises since the enforcement of lockdown in March. The police initially thought they had died by mass suicide owing to financial constraints or some other family reasons.
{{/usCountry}}Investigations later revealed that all the nine people were murdered by Yadav, also a migrant worker from Bihar, to cover up another murder he had committed in March – that of Rafiqa (37), a divorcee sister-in-law of Maqsood, with whom Yadav had an illicit affair.
The police said Yadav had killed Rafiqa on their way to West Bengal at Nidubrolu in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district on March 6 and quietly returned to Warangal.
When other family members of Maqsood grew suspicious about Rafiqa being missing even after two months, Yadav decided to eliminate them. He mixed sleeping pills in their food and after they fell asleep, bundled them in gunny bags and dumped them in an abandoned well, the police said.
The prosecution produced all the evidence before the court, including footage from Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras showing Sanjay Kumar Yadav coming to the victims’ house at 5.30 pm on May 19 and leaving the next morning at 6.30 am.