Ghaziabad: After 36 years, four sentenced to life term in dowry death case
Pankaj Tyagi, the lawyer representing the four accused, said all his clients were in their 60s and 70s as the case dates back to 1982.
In a dowry death case registered in 1982 in Pilkhuwa, a Ghaziabad court on Tuesday sentenced four men to life imprisonment. The judgment came nearly 36 years after the woman was burnt to death at her in-laws’ house in June 1982.
The additional district government counsel (ADGC) Vidya Bhushan Sharma said life imprisonment was awarded to victim Beena’s husband Vinay and his three brothers Vijay, Mukesh and Ajay.
The woman, who hailed from Modi Nagar, married Vinay in 1981 and a year later, the accused set her on fire and threw her from the third floor of their house.
“She was burnt with kerosene and some dried red chillies were also thrown over her body. More kerosene was put on her and she was set on fire again. They then threw her from the third floor to the second floor of their house and she died,” Sharma said.
He added that woman’s mother-in-law Chandra Kala and father-in-law Bal Kishor died in 2008.
“It is one of the oldest cases pending in the Ghaziabad court. There were initial hearings during the trial of the case and the statements of the victim’s father and some of her neighbours were recorded. The testimonies of the neighbours helped convict the accused,” Sharma said.
Asked about the delay of nearly 36 years, Sharma said the case moved to two courts where judges were transferred and the case finally landed in the court of additional district judge (15). The police filed the chargesheet in July 1982, he added.
“There was a stay on the proceedings for a period of nearly 20 years. This also led to the delay in the final judgment. The final hearings were wrapped up in the past one year. No one from the woman’s family came to the court for the judgment,” he said.
Pankaj Tyagi, the lawyer representing the four accused, said all his clients were in their 60s and 70s as the case dates back to 1982.
“My clients were surprised when they got the summons last year. They had forgotten about the case as it was pursued by their father who had died. The stay on the proceedings by the high court was for a brief period. Since the records were manual, the lifting of stay did come to our knowledge. By the time we knew of it, the case was disposed of speedily,” he said.