Three jailed till death for beheading cop, witness

Three persons, who had beheaded a police officer and a witness, have been sent to jail for the rest of their lives by a Delhi court for "gruesome and brutal" murders 13 years ago.
The court noted that the "brutality" committed by the convicts was evident as after killing the victims, they beheaded and burnt them and threw the headless bodies in different places.
Additional Sessions Judge V K Bansal noted that the three convicts had murdered Delhi police sub-inspector Satish Kumar and Vijay Kumar Swamy, a public witness, by strangulating and beheading them after tying their hands.
"This itself shows the brutality committed by the accused. They did not stop here and burnt the heads of the deceased and their headless bodies were thrown at agricultural department, Bahadurgarh and near a factory on Rohtak Road," the court said in its 267-page verdict.

There is "no doubt that offence was gruesome, brutal and committed in a most diabolic manner," the court said while holding the three guilty.
It sentenced Joginder (42), Rajinder (55), both of whom are brothers, and Vinod Jatav, 34, all residents of Mangolpuri in North Delhi, for offences of criminal conspiracy, murder, robbery, abduction, destruction of evidence under the IPC and under the Arms Act.

"They are sentenced to life imprisonment, that is imprisonment for the remainder of their natural lives for the offence punishable under sections 302 (murder)/ 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC," it said.
It also imposed a fine of Rs 80,000 each on Joginder and Vinod and Rs 83,000 on Rajinder and said that Rs one lakh each should be paid to the victims' families out of this amount.

Laxmi, the mother of Joginder and Rajinder who was also an accused in the case, had died during the trial and proceedings against her were abated.
Prosecutor Harvinder Kumar Nar had sought death penalty for the convicts saying they had committed the offence in a gruesome manner and there was no scope of their rehabilitation as they also had previous criminal records.
According to the prosecution, the incident took place on March 5, 2004 when Satish and public witness Vijay had gone to Mangolpuri to confirm some information relating to a case. When the two could not be located, a case was registered at a police station.

The next day, two headless bodies were found and identified to be of Vijay and Satish. Later, two half burnt human heads were also found by police at different places.
During the trial, all the accused had denied the charges and claimed that they were falsely implicated.