Life imprisonment for two in Pushkin murder case

3 Mar ’10, Wednesday,The Hindu

UNDP employee and his friend were brutally killed on the night of August 13-14, 2004

NEW DELHI: A court here on Tuesday awarded rigorous life imprisonment to two persons for stabbing to death two homosexuals belonging to affluent families in the Capital nearly six years ago.

Describing the double murder as “ghastly and brutal”, the court said: “Considering the facts and circumstances of the case, the background of the convicts, social and economic liabilities which they have to shoulder, I am of the view that despite the murder being brutal, the case does not fall in the category of rarest of rare cases.” So the court did not award death penalty.

Additional Sessions Judge A. K. Kuhar also imposed a fine of Rs.3,000 each on the convicts, Rajesh Rekwar, an AIDS patient, and Moti, after holding them guilty under Section 302 (murder) and 380 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code.

Pushkin Chandra, 38-year-old son of a retired IAS officer, and his friend Kuldeep were killed on the night of August 13-14, 2004, at Pushkin’s residence in Anand Lok area of South Delhi.

Before the judgment was pronounced by the court, defence counsel sought a lenient punishment for the convicts saying the photographs showing Pushkin in compromising positions with men spoke about the lifestyle of the victims and the circumstances in which the offence was allegedly committed.

· No material could be gathered to show that Pushkin used to blackmail the poor boys: Court

· ‘The convicts had no justification in killing two human beings in such a brutal fashion’

“Without going further on this aspect, I put a question whether the convicts had any justification in killing two human beings in such a brutal fashion? The answer would be: No,” the court said.

The court, however, acquitted two other co-accused, Munna and Jay Kishore, for want of evidence. They had been charged with destruction of evidence and keeping the stolen properties of the victims.

Earlier, Public Prosecutor Davendra Kumar sought death penalty for the convicts saying “there were multiple stab injuries (11 wounds on Pushkin’s body) on the….. victims. This itself reflects the brutality with which the murders were committed.”

The defence counsel opposed the plea saying convict Rajesh and his wife, who were having three minor children, were suffering from AIDS.

It was also argued that both the convicts belonged to poor families and their dependents would starve to death if they were awarded the extreme penalty.

In a case hinged on circumstantial evidence as no one witnessed the incident, the court in its 49-page judgement relied on the testimonies of two prosecution witnesses who had last seen the victims in the company of the accused.

The CCTV footage of a camera at an ATM centre in Delhi showing one of the accused withdrawing money by using Pushkin’s ATM card after the incident linked them with the offence, the court said.

The arrest of accused from places in Uttar Pradesh and recovery of stolen goods from their possession also helped the prosecution in nailing them.

The defence plea was that Pushkin was killed allegedly by the accused who got provoked as the victim used to blackmail them after photographing them naked.

“....despite these activities of Pushkin Chandra being apparent on record, no material could be gathered to show that he used to blackmail the poor boys with whom he used to indulge in sexually pervert act. Therefore, to say that the accused were being blackmailed by Pushkin and that is why they planned to eliminate him under provocation would be saying something off the record which has no evidential value in the eyes of law. Moreover, nobody gets a right to eliminate a human being for whatever injustice has been caused to him,” the court said.

Pushkin Chandra, working with UNDP, used to photograph nude men with whom he happened to have unnatural sex, the prosecution said. – PTI

http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/03/stories/2010030358430400.htm