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SC gives 10-year jail term to 21 Congress workers

Apex court verdict comes 30 years after clash with CPM in WB
Last Updated 03 May 2013, 18:56 IST

Three decades after a violent clash between Congress and CPM workers in West Bengal claimed one life and left several injured, the Supreme Court on Friday ordered 10 years  sentence to 21 people, holding them guilty of culpable homicide.

A bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra modified the 2006 Calcutta High Court verdict, which had held the convicts, said to be Congress workers, guilty of murder.

The verdict comes as a relief to the petitioners, who were sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court as well as the high court.

Holding as many as 21 people guilty, the court also directed them to pay Rs 5,000 as fine, out of which 50 per cent would be paid to the wife of the victim, Azad Ali, as compensation.

According to the prosecution, about 200 to 250 villagers, armed with sticks and sharp weapons, attacked Siktahar village on July 5, 1983, forced some of the residents out and assaulted them after taking them to a place called Hijul Pakur field.

Some of the victims – Md Yasin, Hasan Ali and Farjan Ali – who sustained serious injuries,  managed to escape. They subsequently filed a complaint with the police, on which the case is based.

The apex court rejected a plea by the accused that they had been falsely implicated as part of a political rivalry.

They had contended that the case against them had been filed to counter the incident that took place on July 4, 1983, a day earlier, wherein 13 persons from Malopara, the village from which the accused belong, at Balurghat in Malda district were brutally murdered in an attack allegedly by CPM workers.

Relying upon statement of witnesses who had sustained injuries in the incident on that fateful day, the court said that the testimony of the injured witnesses is to be accorded considerable weight, and it is unlikely that they would spare the real culprit and implicate an innocent person.

The bench also said that though some of the witnesses were parties with vested interests, that alone was not sufficient ground to discard their testimony.

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(Published 03 May 2013, 18:56 IST)

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