Lecturer’s murder: Life sentence for 2 accused

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, Ghaziabad, September 23, 2011

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) judge, on Friday, sentenced two people to life imprisonment and announced a three-year imprisonment for another accused in the murder of Kavita Rani, a lecturer with Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Meerut.

The CBI special judge, AK Singh, sentenced accused Ravinder Singh and Sultan Singh to life imprisonment and announced a three-year imprisonment for Yogesh Kumar. Ravinder Pradhan, the prime accused in the case, had died under mysterious circumstances inside Dasna Jail in May 2008 during the case trial.

Besides, the court also ordered that Dr Mairajuddin Ahmed, the then irrigation minister in UP government, be tried for perjury (under Section 340 of CrPC) as he had retracted  his earlier statement during his deposition in the court.

The court on Friday also gave a month’s time to the CBI to submit all the case-related documents with the court in relation to a CrPC 173(8) closure report filed by the investigating agency in May 2011.

Although, the CBI had filed a chargesheet against Pradhan and his accomplices in March 2007, it continued its investigations, suspecting a “larger conspiracy” related to the lecturer’s murder. The court, on Friday, refused to accept CBI’s closure report related to further investigations and registered it as a document in its records.

Rani had disappeared in October 2006 and a case was filed with the UP Police, which was later transferred to the CBI in January 2007. In its chargesheet filed in March 2007, the CBI had stated that Pradhan became friendly with Rani and introduced her to several UP politicians and educationists, including RP Singh, Ahmed, Babu Lal and Kiran Pal Singh.

The CBI investigations also revealed that in April 2006, Pradhan persuaded Rani to video record her intimate moments with senior educationists and political leaders in order to make quick money. 

The chargesheet said that Pradhan and his accomplices blackmailed and extorted Rs 35 lakh from Ahmed and gave only Rs 4 lakh to Rani. This soured their relationship and led Pradhan and his accomplices murder Rani inside a car. The body was later thrown into a canal.

However, CBI did not chargesheet any of the ministers or the educationists and submitted a police closure report .

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