Three get life term in Kalka murder case

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, January 6

The court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Narender Sura today awarded life imprisonment to three and two-year rigorous imprisonment (RI) to two more in the 2016 Kalka murder case in which a 19-year-old youth was bludgeoned to death with an iron rod and jewellery items worth around Rs50 lakh were looted.

The murder, in which convicts Iqbal Ahmed and Mohammad Abid hit victim Shubhanshu Verma on the head multiple times with an iron rod, was recorded in CCTV cameras. After the murder, the footage got leaked and reached the common man too. People uploaded it on YouTube and TV channels also ran it.

Iqbal Ahmed, a resident of Ghaziabad (UP), and Mohammad Abid, a resident of Delhi, were fined Rs5 lakh each. Jagdish Ram, a resident of Delhi, who brought Ahmed and Abid in an Innova, was also sentenced to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs2.50 lakh.

Abid's wife Naseem Begum and jeweller Ram Gopal Verma, both residents of Delhi, from whom stolen jewellery items were recovered, were fined Rs10,000 each. The court awarded Rs11 lakh of the total fine imposed on the convicts to the mother of the victim for "loss to the family".

One more accused, Mohammed Sadiq, son of Abid, was declared a proclaimed offender in the case.

* What had happened

The victim, Shubhanshu Verma, younger son of jeweller Jagdish Raj Verma, used to sleep inside the shop, which was situated on the road leading to the famous Kali Mata temple in Kalka.

On the intervening night of July 4 and July 5, 2016, the accused, Iqbal Ahmed and Mohd Abid, residents of Delhi, entered the shop after cutting its tin roof with a gas cutter. While Ahmed held Shubhanshu from his throat, Abid hit him on the head multiple times with an iron rod. The court observed that it was about 10 times the victim was hit and a huge volume of blood oozed out. Later, they broke open a chest at the shop and fled with jewellery items.

The next day, as Shubhanshu was not picking up the phone, his father along with his brother went to the shop where they found him lying in a pool of blood. He was rushed to the Community Health Centre at Kalka where he was declared brought dead. He used to sleep inside the shop for security purposes.

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