Blood money saves 8 indians from gallows

Lily

B.R
Staff member
Chandigarh/Dubai March 28:

Relatives and friends of eight Indians and two Pakistani boys heaved a sigh of relief today as a Sharjah appeal court, after accepting their blood money, waived their death penalty and reduced their sentence to three-year imprisonment in a bootlegging-cum-murder case.

This is one of the several cases in which Indian and Pakistani workers are being tried for bootlegging-cum-murder of their fellow expatriate workers. In yet another case, where three Punjab boys were convicted and given death sentence for the murder of a Punjabi worker, are all set to be released in the next few days after the appeal court not only accepted the settlement and allowed the family of the victim to take blood money, but also reduced the revised sentence to three years after waiving their death sentence.

The beneficiaries are Pardeep Kumar of Hoshiarpur, Kashmiri Lal of Nawanshahr and Tarlochan Singh of Hoshiarpur. The victim was Bikramjit Singh of Gurdaspur. In this case also, the blood money was paid by SP Singh Oberoi. Since the convicts have already completed their reduced three-year imprisonment sentence, the process of setting them free has been set in motion.Their formal release from the prison is expected any day.

In today’s case, Mumtaz Yousuf, a worker from Faisalabad in Pakistan, was murdered on July 11, 2009, in a drunken brawl between two groups of expatriate workers. The Sharjah Shariat Court had convicted all the 10 suspects, eight Indians and two Pakistanis, and sentenced them to death. Those who had their death sentence waived today are Kuldip Singh of Moga, Sachin Kumar Sharma of Goraya, Rakesh Kumar of Maqsudan, Sukhpal Singh of Mansa, Hardev Singh of Kotkapura, Charanjit of Nawanshahr, Amarjit Singh of Goraya, Rashwinder Pal of Moga besides Mohammed Ansar Chaudhary (Azad Kashmir) and Shahid Hussain Ifthreen Rana of Multan Burewal of Pakistan.

The appeal court that accepted the settlement between the families of the bereaved and the suspects on November 24 last year had deferred the revised final verdict after a couple of adjournments. Dubai-based SP Singh Oberoi, who not only helped in brokering a settlement but also paid blood money on behalf of the convicts, told The Tribune over the phone that the revised verdict would facilitate the release of all the convicts in the next six months. Since their sentence had been reduced to three years, they had already undergone imprisonment for almost two years.

“The computed sentence of 27 months would end in six months from now after which all of them will be deported back to their countries,” he said. The settlement was reached with Mohammed Yousuf, father of the deceased, who had accepted the blood money in the court besides submitting to the appeal court to review the death sentence as per the Shariat law.

 
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