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Announcing the verdict late on Monday evening, the court ruled that the circumstances and facts of the crime did not fall under the rarest of the rare category, and thus was not an apt case of death penalty. The court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Raj Rahul Garg sentenced Pawandeep (40), Ravikant Tyagi and Anil Tyagi under Section 302 (murder), 397 (robbery with intend to cause death) and 460 (trespass) of the IPC. The three were also slapped a fine of Rs 75,000 each.
The accused were convicted for the murders on February 12.
During the course of arguments, the prosecution had pleaded that the accused be awarded death penalty as the case where a son brutally murdered his parents fell under the ‘rarest of the rare’ category. The court, however, said according to the guidelines, death sentence was awarded only when life term appeared to be an inadequate punishment with regard to the circumstances. “Life imprisonment is a rule, and death is an exception,” said the court order.
The court also held that the three accused had the scope of being reformed.
The sensational triple murder of retired group captain T P Singh, his wife Shibani and sister Ajit Kaur had rocked the city in February 2006. Pawandeep was accused of killing them in connivance with the Tyagi brothers due to a family discord. Through his counsel Saurabh Mohanta, the brother of the accused, Jasdeep, said justice had been finally delivered and that he was happy with the verdict.
Jasdeep works with a multinational company in Pune.
Pawandeep shows no regret
The accused, Pawandeep, did not show any remorse as the verdict was announced. He sat wearing a broad smile. Looking calm and composed after the verdict, Pawandeep claimed he was innocent. “What else can I do? I cannot jump from here and run,” he told mediapersons. “All I can say is I am innocent. The police never arrested me. I surrendered because they were torturing my girlfriend’s parents,” he said. Pawandeep earlier worked with a call centre in Gurgaon. Asked what he was thinking while waiting for the verdict, he said: “It is sheer prejudice and bias.” While he had no answer to counter the CFSL reports and other circumstantial evidence that nailed him, he went on to say that he was missing his parents the most and that he was never after their property. While he claimed he made the confessional statement of his involvement in the crime at the behest of the police, he had nothing to say when asked why he had said “my parents deserved it” in front of the media at the time of his arrest. No one else from the family was present in the court.
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