Shibu Soren

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Tuesday awarded life imprisonment to the former Union Minister and chief of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Shibu Soren, and four others in the Shashinath Jha murder case.

Public prosecutor A.K. Singh had pressed for the death sentence. But Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Kedia rejected the submission, saying that "it is not the rarest of rare cases."

Mr. Kedia said: "The convict is sentenced to life imprisonment under Sections 120-B (conspiracy) and 364 (kidnapping) read with 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code ."

Soren would also have to pay a fine of Rs. 5 lakh as compensation — Rs.1lakh to Jha's mother Priyambada Devi, and Rs.2 lakh each to daughters Kavita and Priti.

Compensation sought

The CBI had pleaded for a substantive compensation as the two daughters had only their grandmother to take care of.

The others sentenced to life are Nand Kishore alias Nandu, Ajay Kumar Mehta alias Dilip, Pashupati Nath Mehta alias Posho and Shailendra Bhattacharya.

Seeking the death sentence for Soren, CBI counsel compared his role in the case to that of Mohammed Afzal, who is on death row in the Parliament attack case. Counsel submitted that though Soren was not present on the scene of crime, his role as conspirator was sufficient for him to be awarded the capital punishment.

Counsel for Soren, R.K. Anand, opposed the CBI plea submitting that the case did not meet the Supreme Court guidelines for awarding the death sentence.

The CBI chargesheeted the convicts on November 10, 1998, alleging that Shashinath Jha, a private secretary to Soren, was abducted on May 22, 1994 from Dhaula Kuan in southwest Delhi and later murdered in a residential colony in Ranchi.

Jha reportedly had knowledge of the payment of a bribe to four erstwhile JMM MPs, including Mr. Soren, who had voted against the no-confidence motion against the P.V. Narasimha Rao Government in July 1993.

The charge sheet further said Jha knew about the alleged secret deal between the JMM and the Congress to bail out the Rao Government and was demanding his share.

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