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New Delhi: A city court on Wednesday sentenced property dealer Vijay Pal to life in prison for plotting his wife's murder and gave his accomplice in the crime, contract killer Vinod, the same punishment.
Delivering the judgment, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar on Tuesday held Pal and Vinod guilty under sections 302 (murder), 397 (robbery) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for killing Rajni, 26, on the night of August 13, 2001.
The court also ordered both men to pay a fine of Rs2,000 (Dh172.4) each. It, however, acquitted another accused for want of evidence.
Death penalty sought
During arguments before arriving at the quantum of sentence, the prosecution demanded the death penalty for the two accused but the court rejected the plea stating that the case did not fall under the category of the "rarest of rare" cases for such punishment to be considered.
According to the prosecution, Rajni was shot dead in a car by Pal and the hired assassin while she was returning from her parents' home.
Pal, a property dealer in the city's Aya Nagar area, had gone to his father-in-law's house at Wazirpur to fetch his wife back. He contended in court that Rajni was shot by Vinod during an attempted robbery.
The prosecution said Vinod and another accomplice waited at Olof Palme Marg in Vasant Vihar on the night of the murder. He lay in wait at a pre-arranged spot and shot Rajni on the forehead from close range. As she collapsed, Pal shot her again in the chest. Then he shot himself in the thigh.
To give credence to the robbery theory, he removed some jewellery items from his wife's body and handed them over to Vinod, who then left the scene along with the other accomplice who goes by the same name.
Pal had contracted Vinod for Rs50,000, of which Rs10,000 was paid in advance.
The prosecution had said that Pal was a womaniser and had affairs even after his marriage.
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