Ghaziabad: Four get death penalty for beheading three - Hindustan Times
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Ghaziabad: Four get death penalty for beheading three

Hindustan Times | By, Ghaziabad
Oct 30, 2015 01:22 PM IST

A Ghaziabad court has awarded death penalty to four accused of murdering three persons, including a woman. The victims, who hailed from Jharkhand, were beheaded and their bodies dumped.

A Ghaziabad court has awarded death penalty to four accused of murdering three persons, including a woman. The victims, who hailed from Jharkhand, were beheaded and their bodies dumped.

A court in Ghaziabad found the four accused guilty of murder and destruction of evidence.(HT photo)
A court in Ghaziabad found the four accused guilty of murder and destruction of evidence.(HT photo)

Additional sessions judge Arun Chandra Srivastava held out the death penalty to the accused Pawan, Dwarika, Vinod and Chandradev for committing murder with common intention and destroying evidence. The court termed the murders as the ‘rarest of rare’ because of the brutality in which the victims were killed and their heads dismembered.

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“This heinous crime comes under ‘rarest of rare’ cases because the heads of the victims were dismembered from the bodies and thrown away to hide the identity of the victims. It is the duty of the legal system to protect the right of the citizens and granting sympathy to such heinous murderers will only lead to distrust among the public towards the judicial system,” the order said.

The murders came to light on February 11, 2004, when three bodies were found packed inside gunny bags and dumped at a ground in Shalimar Garden Extension I area of Ghaziabad.

Following an FIR, the accused were arrested and the three decomposed heads of the victims Hari Yadav, Keshav and his mother Kaliya were recovered from a nearby drain.

During investigation, it was found that the three victims were living in the flat of accused Pawan and refused to move out. This is what led to an altercation between the victims and the accused.

The prosecution produced 12 witnesses to prove their case. None of the witnesses were direct witnesses to the crime and the case rested on circumstantial evidence.

Anees, a building construction supplier, told the court that prime accused Pawan had told him on the night of the murder that the flat occupied by the victims belonged to him and he would finish them to get possession of his flat. Anees also told the court that the accused had threatened him against deposing before the court.

Even though four major witnesses were declared hostile in the case, parts of their statements were relied upon. The court said the recovery of the heads on the instance of the accused, the witness statements about the accused entering and leaving the victims’ flat, telling one of the witnesses that the victims will be rid of was sufficient enough to complete the chain of circumstantial evidence.

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