Four youths get life term for murdering their friend

The Goa Children's Court today sentenced four youths to life imprisonment for murdering their teenage friend, Mandar Surlakar in 2006 for ransom.
Out of the five accused in the case, the court handed down the life term to Rohan Dhungat, Nafiyaz Sheikh, Shankar Tiwari and Jovito Ryan Pinto.
The fifth accused, Al Saleha Beig, who had turned approver in the case, was let off.
All the accused were minors at the time of the crime.
The court yesterday held the four guilty of murder, kidnapping, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy, but the arguments on quantum of sentence were heard today.

Public Prosecutor Pratima Vernekar had sought capital punishment to the accused, but the plea was rejected by the court which observed that all of them were minors at the time of the crime.

On August 14, 2006, the five friends had kidnapped Mandar, son of a doctor, and demanded ransom of Rs 50 lakh from his father.
They allegedly killed him when their plan failed to take off.
Mandar's body was found on August 16 at Ponda village and police arrested the five accused, on the same day.
According to the prosecution, Madar was injected with vodka shots twice before he was bludgeoned to death with a basketball bat.