Ex-army officer held guilty for murder after 26 yrs

Arunima / CNN-IBN

Published on Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 00:28, Updated at Tue, Apr 29, 2008 in Nation » India section

New Delhi: A retired Lt Colonel was on Monday convicted of murdering a man 26 years ago.

For all those years, Krishan Sikand’s father lived in the hope of getting justice for his dead son.

From one adjournment to the other, from one court date to the other, he struggled on, never losing hope. But when the verdict finally came, the 98-year-old was overwhelmed.

“I pray to God and thank him,” a teary-eyed H D Sikand said.

Sikand's son Krishan Sikand died on October 2, 1982 when a parcel delivered at his residence exploded and killed him on the spot.

Krishan’s son, Sanjay, who was 11-years-old at that time, was present when the explosion had taken place.

“My father had come back for a holiday. There was a party going on downstairs at my cousin’s house. My father told me to go and get him some cake, so I walked out of the gate and that was it. That’s all I remember. There was smoke in the first floor apartment of ours,” he says.

CBI proved in the court that Retd army officer S J Chaudhary killed Krishan Sikand because he did not approve of Sikand’s plans to get married to his ex-wife.

Chaudhary had access to the explosives, which the Indian Army had seized from Pakistan during the 1971 war. He used a grenade from this ordinance to make the parcel bomb.

The sentence in this case will be pronounced on April 30, and the convict now literally hangs between life and death. But whatever the punishment, for senior Sikand, it’s consolation enough that justice has been delivered in his lifetime.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/exarmy-officer-held-guilty-for-murder-after-26-yrs/64141-3-1.html