Alappuzha: A Kerala court on Monday concluded hearing arguments on the sentence to be given to the 15 men who were held guilty of killing a BJP OBC wing leader in this coastal district in December 2021.
Mavelikkara Additional District judge V G Sreedevi listed the matter on January 25 when the court will hear the convicts on sentencing, Special Prosecutor Prathap G Padickal said.
The prosecution has sought the maximum sentence for the convicts saying that they were a 'trained killer squad' and the cruel and diabolical manner in which the victim was killed in front of his own mother, infant, and wife brings it within the ambit of the rarest of the rarest of crimes.
The lawyers appearing for the convicts on the other hand sought leniency in the punishment by claiming that the crime was not rarest of rare as similar killings have happened in Kerala several times, the prosecutor said.
They also cited the age of the convicts, who were between 26 years and 52 years old, while seeking the maximum possible exemption in the sentencing, the prosecutor said.
The convicted persons are associated with the now-banned radical Islamist group, Popular Front of India (PFI).
Ranjith Sreenivasan, the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, was brutally attacked and killed in his home on December 19, 2021, in front of his family, allegedly by activists affiliated with PFI and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).
The court on January 20 had found that out of the 15 people accused in the case, one to eight were directly involved in the case.
It had also found four people (accused number nine to 12) guilty of murder because they, along with those directly involved in the crime, came to the spot armed with deadly weapons.
Their objective was to prevent Sreenivasan from escaping and stop anyone entering the house after hearing his screams.
The court had accepted the prosecution's argument that they were also liable for the common offense of murder under IPC Section 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), Padickal had said on January 20.
The court also convicted for murder three others (accused number 13 to 15) who had hatched the conspiracy to kill Sreenivasan, the SPP had said.
The BJP leader's murder occurred just hours after SDPI leader K S Shan was killed by a gang on the night of December 18, 2021 while he was returning home in Alappuzha.
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