Murder over conversion: SC upholds life imprisonment to two

The Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence awarded to two persons for killing a Muslim man after he converted two Hindu girls to Islam and married them in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore district.
A bench of Justices F M I Kalifulla and Uday Umesh Lalit upheld the punishment awarded by the Madras High Court to Kamal and Vishwanathan for stabbing to death one Sultan Meeran in 2002.
"In our considered view, this is not a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The assault was deliberate and designed to achieve the result namely the death of Sultan. The courts below were therefore right and justified in convicting and sentencing the appellants...," the bench said.

The apex court was hearing appeals filed by the convicts against the verdict of the Madras High Court, which had confirmed life sentence handed down to them by the trial court.
The trial court had in 2003 convicted the appellants under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC and sentenced them to undergo life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000, while relying on the prosecution's theory that conversion was behind the killing.
The convicts had threatened Sultan that his act was creating a "danger for Hindu religion and that if he continues such conversions then he must save his life."

A month after being threatened, Sultan converted another Hindu girl to Islam and married her as well. Enraged over the conversion, Kamal and his friend stabbed Sultan to death after he came out of a snooker club.