Luck finally ran out for the “Beer Man” on Thursday with the Sewree fast-track court sentencing him to life imprisonment for killing an unidentified man at Azad Maidan, one of the seven murders he is alleged to have committed. He had charged with three of the murders; in two of those, he went on to earn an acquittal.

Ravindra Kantrole is called the ‘Beer Man’ after the beer cans found at the site of the murders he was accused of. The seven murdered men had been found in south Mumbai between October 2006 and February 2007, with no apparent explanation or link, except for the beer can alongside the body.

Kantrole, once a police informant, was arrested in January 2007. He had been charged with three of the murders. He was later acquitted in two as the prosecution failed to gather enough circumstantial evidence.

Additional ad-hoc judge A A Kulkarni convicted, sentenced and fined him Rs 2000. The ruling came on the basis of two prosecution witnesses who had apparently seen him at the spot of the murder. The court also accepted evidence submitted by the Forensic Science Laboratory and said that it corroborated the statement of the two witnesses.

One of the witnesses, Rajesh Deshmukh, said he had been on his way to his stall early on the morning of January 11, 2007, when he saw a man beating another on the bridge. Deshmukh later identified Kantrole in the identification parade.

The other witness, Natha Dongre, said he saw a body lying in a pool of blood and a man sleeping next to the body. Dongre had not bothered to report the matter to the police then but, he told the court, he saw news clips later and realised he had been witness to a “serious offence”.