The Bombay high court on Friday upheld conviction and life sentence awarded to four persons who were charged for killing a fellow prisoner in retaliation to murder of their gang member John D’Souza inside the highly secured Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai. The accused had attacked a member of rival gang Ali Asgar Mehdi with razors in January 2007 at the same place in jail where D’Souza was killed in 2006.
The division bench of acting chief justice V.K. Tahilramani and Justice A.S. Gadkari upheld the conviction and life sentence of Rajesh Chaudhari alias Gupta, Irfan Ishtiyak Shaikh, Irfan Babu Shaikh and Hasan Shaikh with observation that the dying declaration, in which they have been named, is fully reliable and trustworthy and “We are of the considered opinion that the appellants alone are responsible for causing the death of Ali Azgar Mehdi and there are no merits in the present appeal.”
The prosecution’s case was that in December 2006, applicants Irfan Ishtiyak and Salim were in prison in connection with an attempt to murder case, while Irfan and Chaudhari were accused of robbery. On December 23, a fight had broken out between them and their rival group of inmates following a dispute over filling a bucket of water. In this fight D’Souza died on the spot while three other injured were admitted to JJ Hospital.
However, a month later on January 28, 2007 the accused caught Asgar, who was an accused in D’Souza’s murder case, in the same spot and attacked him with razors. Asgar was taken to JJ Hospital where he died during medical treatment but before his death he had given statement to police in which he had clearly said who had stabbed him on which part of the body and it was a strong evidence against the accused.
Though five persons were tried by a fast-track court in Sewri that convicted the applicants and acquitted one Ghashir Solanki for want of proof.
While challenging the conviction in the high court, defence lawyers argued the Ali Asgar was not in a condition to give a statement to the police and hence his dying declaration could not be relied upon. According to the defence, the incident took place on January 28 but the accused were arrested only on March 3 and this delay created a doubt in the mind. They claimed that the accused are falsely implicated in the case. However, judges did not accept this argument and upheld conviction and life sentence of these accused.
