A Delhi court on Friday awarded life imprisonment to four persons belonging to “spiritual and social” organisation Ananda Marga in the L.N. Mishra murder case.
The court had on December 8 held the four — Santoshananda, Ranjan Dwivedi, Sudevananda and Gopalji — guilty in the case.
The court also granted a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh each to the families of the three dead; Rs. 1.5 lakh each to the seven who had sustained grievous injuries and Rs. 50,000 each to the 18 who sustained simple injuries in the bomb blast.
The court said that the disbursement of the compensation would be done by the District Legal Services Authority, Patna, within 60 days of the order.
The erstwhile Railway Minister was killed after a blast at the Samastipur Railway station in Bihar.
The court convicted the four accused for criminal conspiracy and murder, under the Explosive Substances Act and various other sections of the Indian Penal Code.
Mr. Mishra received serious injuries in the blast on June 2, 1975. He succumbed to injuries the next day.
More than 200 prosecution and defence witnesses were examined during the trial. There were five accused in the case. One of them died during the trial.
The CBI had initially filed a charge sheet against the accused in a Patna court. The Supreme Court had later transferred the trial to a Delhi court.
The Supreme Court had in 2012 dismissed a plea for quashing charges and acquittal of the accused in the case on the ground of delay in the trial, saying that the long delay of 37 years in disposal of the case could not be a ground to allow the plea.
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