Youth gets life term for murdering parents-in-law

A 28-year-old youth was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for stabbing to death his parents-in-law following a quarrel with his wife.
Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar Khanna refused the prosecution's plea to award death penalty to Mohd Vakil, a carpenter by profession, saying the case does not fall in the rarest of rare category.
Apart from awarding him the life term, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Mohd Vakil, a resident of Mehrauli. It said that of the fine amount, Rs 1.5 lakh, if realised, should be given to the victims' children.

Vakil was held guilty of murdering his parents-in-law Abdul Hameed, 62, and Amina in 2009 as they tried to mediate in a quarrel he had with their daughter, whom he had married the year before.
According to the prosecution, on September 21, 2009, for the festival of Eid, he had brought new clothes for his wife upon which she asked him to get new garments for himself as well.
But as Vakil refused to get new clothes for himself, his wife declined to wear hers. That led to a quarrel between the two and police said that Vakil beat his wife and also threatened to kill her entire family.

The next day victim Abdul Hameed came to his daughter's house to resolve the issue but Vakil again beat his wife and asked her to go to her parents' house, saying he had divorced her.

Later, in the evening, Vakil went to his wife's parents' house in Sangam Vihar and repeatedly stabbed his father-in-law with a knife. When his mother-in-law Amina came out, he also stabbed her. Abdul and Amina died on the spot and Vakil went on the run after the act before police managed to nab him.
During the trial, Vakil pleaded innocence saying he was falsely implicated in the case and argued that he had enjoyed cordial relations with his in-laws and did not murder them.

"On considering the totality of facts and circumstances, this court is of the opinion that it is not a case for imposition of death penalty as it does not qualify as a 'rarest of rare case'," the court ruled.