Death for eight UP 'honour killers'

The couple, belonged to different castes, and their friend, who helped them to elope,  were brutally  murdered by the villagers in 1991.

However, justice caught up with the self-proclaimed moral police-turned-murderers 20 years later.

A district court on Wednesday sentenced eight accused, including the father of the girl, to death and awarded life imprisonment to 27 others on the  charge of killing Bijendra, Roshni and their friend Ramkishun.   They were hanged upside down on trees and thrashed before being strangled by the villagers in Mehrana as directed by a caste panchayat. Their bodies were later burnt to destroy evidence.

Additional District Judge A K Upadhyaya said it was a “rarest  of rare” case and the accused deserved no mercy.

All the accused persons were above sixty.  In all, 53 persons had been charge-sheeted in the case and the trial lasted for 20 years. As many as 16 persons died during the pendency of the matter. The trial judge had acquitted one accused. Another accused is still at large.