28-yr-old sentenced to death for killing parents, pregnant wife to marry lover

A man was sentenced to death on Tuesday for killing his pregnant wife and foster parents. Nitin Verma (28) killed them because he wanted to marry a neighbour. Holding that Verma was a “menace to society”, Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said life imprisonment was “inadequate punishment” for his crime. Verma had repeatedly stabbed his handicapped father, mother and his six-month pregnant wife to death in April 2008. “There was no justification for the convict to commit the grotesque killings. The convict appears to be without any remorse,” said the judge. The court said Verma had stabbed them brutally and deserved no leniency. It also noted that the murders seemed methodical and planned, with Verma first killing his father on the ground floor of the house, then his mother on the first floor before rushing to his room to kill his wife. Public Prosecutor Aditya Chauhan had pleaded with the court to sentence Verma to death as he had murdered his aged parents and his wife in “a brutal and diabolic manner”. “Verma was in a dominating position in his family. All family members were at his mercy. This calls for harsher punishment. Verma was morally and legally bound to take care of his family, but instead murdered them in a brutal and barbaric manner,” the court said. “The convict wiped out his whole family to continue his liaison with a girl and to marry her. Nitin is awarded death sentence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code,” it said. Verma had been adopted by his parents when he was a child. “When he did not spare his own parents and wife, what respect would he show for the lives of others? The convict is like a live bomb, which has the potential of causing a huge catastrophe if not destroyed at the earliest,” the court said. Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/28yrold-sentenced-to-death-for-killing-parents-pregnant-wife-to-marry-lover/997931/0 [accessed on 8th September 2012]

Six convicts in death row in Bengal jails

Saibal Sen, TNN Sep 5, 2012, 04.04PM IST KOLKATA: With Supreme Court upholding Ajmal Kasab's death sentence, six death row convicts in Bengal spending the life in the condemned cells in Alipore and Presidency Jails still await to know their fate. Among the six, three appeals are now pending in the Supreme Court; the rest in Calcutta high court. In one case, the convict's kin has informed jail authorities that the high court has commuted the death sentence to life but the order is yet to reach Alipore jail. The last death sentence in the country was executed in Alipore central jail on August 14, 2004. Dhananjoy Chaterjee, 39, was hanged for raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in Bhowanipore on March 5, 1990. Chatterjee was a security-guard of the complex where the child stayed. Before that a serial killer Auto Shankar was hanged in Chennai central jail on April 27, 1995. Before Dhananjoy, the last execution in Bengal was also in Alipore central jail in 1993 when murder convicts, Kartik Sil and Sukumar Burman, were hanged. Since Dhananjoy's hanging courts in Bengal had passed several death sentences, the first was by a special sessions court which sentenced to death Aftab Ansari and Jamaluddin Naser to death on April 27, 2005 in the USIS attack case. Ansari is in Alipore jail since May 3, 2002; while Naser was brought here before him, on February 21 that year. The death sentence was upheld by the Calcutta high court prompting the duo to appeal against it in the Supreme Court. The other case which pending in the Supreme Court, sources said, is the death sentence awarded by the General Security Force court March 2, 2007 to former BSF head constable Balbir Singh. It is learnt the Guwahati high court has already turned down Singh's appeal against it prompting him to move the Supreme Court. Singh - admitted to Alipore jail on October 6, 2010 - was convicted for murdering his superior Deputy Commandant Kameswar Singh for ticking him off for dereliction of duty while posted at Rajnagar outpost in South Tripura district. Balbir then gunned down Assistant Commandant Alok Ranjan as he had witnessed the killing of the other officer. Among the others who've also appealed against their death sentence in Calcutta high court are Sambhu Lohar (in Alipore jail) and Kebal Roy (in Presidency jail). Sambhu was sentenced to death by a Suri court on September 15, 2010 for murdering two people inside an Sainthia oil mill. The victims were first drugged and later hacked to death with a chopper later their bodies were set on to destroy evidence. The day the Additional Sessions Judge, 3rd court, Suri sentenced Sambhu to death he was immediately brought to Alipore jail and send to the condemned cell. Roy was sentenced to death by a Kolkata court on September 24, 2008. Roy had murdered his employers - Tarachand (68) and Sarada Devi Banka (56) - in their Mansarovar Apartments home in Camac Street on April 18, 2005. Roy, police said, also stole Rs 20-lakhs worth of valuables. After the murder, Roy fled Kolkata and was arrested from his native village Simultala in Bihar a month later. Roy is in Presidency jail ever since his arrest. On August 25, this year, they've informed that a Calcutta high court division bench has commuted Bagdi's death sentence to life imprisonment. The formal court orders are yet to reach Alipore jail, though. These convicts aren't the only ones in condemned cells till a few days back. Nikku Yadav, the domestic help who was convicted of murdering his employer Rabindra Kaur Luthra in her Tripura Enclave flat in Ballygunge Circular Road on February 15, 2007, was another death row convict till the Calcutta high court on October 7, 2010 commuted his death sentence to life. Nikku had been handed death by the Alipore Sessions Court on August 29, 2008. source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-09-05/kolkata/33614556_1_alipore-jail-central-jail-death-sentence [accessed on 8th September 2012]

Assam man on death row fasts to end capital punishment

Samudra Gupta Kashyap : Guwahati, Fri Aug 31 2012, 01:43 hrs Waiting for a hangman for over 17 years now since the Sessions Judge of Kamrup awarded him a death penalty — and one that was subsequently upheld by the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court — Mahendra Nath Das has launched a “Gandhian” fast-unto-death in the Jorhat Central Jail, demanding abolition of capital punishment. “Capital punishment, like so many other things, is a legacy left behind by the British who treated us like slaves. I have been waiting in the prison with a death penalty for 17 years now. At this moment I pray to you to not only do away with my death sentence but also release me from prison as I have already served imprisonment more than a life sentence,” Das, who was shifted to the Jorhat Medical College Hospital after he took ill on the third day of his fast-unto-death on Wednesday, said in a letter addressed to the Chief Justice of India. Das was sentenced to death by the Sessions Judge, Kamrup (Guwahati) on August 18, 1997 in connection with the murder of one Harakanta Das in Guwahati on April 24, 1996. The death sentence was confirmed by the HC on February 3, 1998. The SC upheld the death sentence on May 14, 1999. A mercy petition that Das had filed before the President in 1999, was rejected in 2011. Source: The Indian Express http://www.indianexpress.com/news/assam-man-on-death-row-fasts-to-end-capital-punishment/995713/ [accessed on 1st September 2012]

How Kasab might change Mumbai's take on capital punishment

1 Sep, 2012, 02.22AM IST, Vikram Doctor,ET Bureau At some point in the last century, executions within Bombay itself stopped altogether, with the gallows being moved to Yerawada Jail in Pune. It isn't clear when the actual last execution in the city took place, but the last in Maharashtra was in 1995 when Amrutlal Joshi was executed for murdering three members of the Sadarangani family in Bombay's Khar suburb. That execution was the 100th conducted by Arjun Jadhav, the state's hangman, but nearly all were done in Pune. Kasab will have to be taken there too, unless the authorities decided to build temporary gallows at Arthur Road jail. Joshi's execution was the second last in India (Auto Shankar's execution in Salem is considered to be the second last, but it was on April 27, 1995 and ToI 's report dates Joshi's execution to July12). After that Dhananjoy Chatterjee was executed in Kolkata in August 2004 and since then, despite the furious promises of politicians and appeals by TV anchors, there have been none. It is called for, of course, after every violent crime, and the sentence is often passed, yet it is not carried out. Kasab will probably change that. The scale of the crime he was involved in was so horrific and public, amounting almost to armoured invasion, that it almost demands a symbolic response and the Supreme Court's verdict reflects this. Cynical calculations also suggest that the General Election of 2014 makes it likely, since elections and executions share a dubious history. Politicians have long used executions as a way to show their toughness - for example, French President Giscard d'Estaing was accused of allowing the last executions in French history, in 1977, to help his dwindling re-election prospects. But will Mumbai really cheer when Kasab hangs? Certainly, many like the politicians, aggressive TV anchors and, more understandably, the families bereaved by 26/11 will. And for all the trends away from capital punishment noted above, it should be remembered that this is also the city which tacitly approved of the era of encounter killings staged by the police. These de facto executions helped bring an end to the worse of gang violence, but it also very probably killed off a few innocents, which is exactly what the long judicial process for capital punishment is meant to avoid. To which many in the city would shrug, and say it is sad, but overall it worked, and there were none of the delays and wildly escalating costs of the Kasab trial. For a city always on the run and in pursuit of wealth, it is this part of the trial that has been the most annoying (along with the security restrictions on the neighbourhood near Arthur Road jail). But there is another uncomfortable result of the delay and that has been Kasab himself. Because while it is very easy to see Kasab-the-Terrorist as the "most hated man" in India, the reactions to Kasab-the-Kid-inthe-Dock are a bit more complex. You can see this in the reactions of the police who have been guarding and dealing with him. While never failing in their strict duty, it has been possible to see a slightly softening in their tone as they describe his evident ignorance and naivety, his often disarmingly simple requests and even childishness, which can be seen in the fact that he is alive at all: while his comrades understood they would probably die, and did, when the moment came Kasab clung to life, which is why this drama is with us at all. None of this should suggest that the police or lawyers have become fond of Kasab, but he is a familiar and understandable type, unlike cold and determined ideologues like Abu Jundal. Unless he's managed the most amazing of acting jobs, Kasab is the simple small town kid who came to a big city and got caught up in things beyond his imagination. He could be the kid whistling in the cinema at the latest Eid blockbuster, or riding on top of trains, or hustling you into buying a dubious cellphone on the street or, for that matter, stealing your own cellphone, or maybe even becoming shooter with a gang, but always something recognisable to Mumbai. And yet he did what he did on 26/11, which is a chilling thought since it suggests how easily people can flip. But if, to modify Hannah Arendt's phrase for Adolf Eichmann, he embodies not the banality, but the sheer ordinariness of evil, it still puts him somewhat short of that completely black bogeyman that all those vengeful voices in the media want to see strung up. Some might even acknowledge that Kasab is what Mahatma Gandhi meant when he explained, in his magazine Harijan, in April, 1940, why he opposed capital punishment: "Under a State governed according to the principles of ahimsa, a murderer would be sent to a penitentiary and there given every chance of reforming himself. All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such." When Kasab walks up those steps, at least some in the city that he attacked will remember what Gandhi said. Source: The Economic Times http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/how-kasab-might-change-mumbais-take-on-capital-punishment/articleshow/16094167.cms?curpg=2 [accessed on 1st September 2012]