Kerala - Kochi   

Death sentence for murder

Kochi: Ernakulam Principal Sessions Judge D. Pappachan on Friday awarded death sentence to Amal Raj (19), first accused who was convicted in a case relating to the murder of High Court lawyer M.P. Abraham.

The court also sentenced the other two accused Rajesh (21) and Shimon (23) to life imprisonment. The court on Wednesday found them guilty of committing murder. The court had earlier acquitted the brother of Rajesh, who was also an accused in the case.

The lawyer was found murdered at his office near the Ernakulam South Railway over-bridge on July 12, 2007. The prosecution case was that Amal Raj, who was working with Abraham for the past three months as clerk, had fraudulently withdrawn Rs.6 lakh from a bank account of the lawyer, using his chequebooks.

He hatched a conspiracy with the other accused to murder Abraham after the latter pulled him up for not keeping the office records properly and suspected that he had got information about the missing cheques.

On July 12, the accused waited near the victim’s office till all the other staff left. They brought him down by force and tried to electrocute him. However, when the accused found that the victim did not die, they strangulated him.

The two other accused were hired by Amal Raj for murdering the lawyer. As many as 45 witnesses were examined and 85 documents produced in the case.

Awarding death sentence, the court observed that the first accused who was a confidant of the 78-year-old lawyer had turned out be “his annihilator”, triggering “extreme indignation of the community”. It was a cold-blooded and well-planned murder.

The court imposed Rs.17,000 as fine on the first accused and awarded life term for the offences under section 302 (murder), 109 (abetment), 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), 10 years imprisonment under section 450 (house trespass) and five years imprisonment under section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC. A fine of Rs.15,000 each was imposed on the other two accused.

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