A former MLA of Maharashtra was on Tuesday awarded life imprisonment, along with three others, in a 14-year-old murder case here.
Suresh, alias Pappu Kalani, former MLA from Ulhasnagar, was on Friday last found guilty of murdering BJP activist Inder Bhateja in 1999. He is also an accused in the case of murder of Inder’s brother Ghanshyam earlier in 1990.
Kalyan sessions court judge Rajeshwari Bapat Sarkar awarded life imprisonment to Kalani for criminal conspiracy (Section 120 B of IPC), while Bacchi Pandey, Baba Gabriel and Mohammad Sheikh were held guilty of murder under Section 302. Two others, Narendra Ramsinghani and Richard Fernandes, were acquitted for lack of evidence.
Special Public Prosecutor Vikas Patil had argued for the death penalty to all four convicts, citing it as the rarest of rare cases. He pointed out that Kalani had more than a dozen murder cases pending against him, most of which are under trial.
The prosecution argued that the Bhateja brothers, who were supporters of BJP candidate Sheetaldas Harchandani, had caught Kalani’s associates casting bogus votes in the 1990 Assembly elections in which he contested as a Congress nominee. The same day, Ghanshyam was shot dead on the road in front of Pinto Park hotel in Ulhasnagar. Inder, who was a witness to this murder, managed to escape. However, nine years later on April 27, 1999, he was gunned down in his office in the presence of his police guard.
Charges in the Ghanshyam murder case have been framed, but the trial is yet to begin.
Kalani has been Congress MLA from Ulhasnagar twice, while in 1995 and 1999 he was elected as an independent. In 2004, he won as a candidate of the Republican Party of India (Athawale group).
