Lucknow, December 11
The death sentence of the main convict in the murder of young Indian Oil executive Manjunath four years back was today commuted to life by the Allahabad High Court, which felt the offence was not rarest of rare case.

The two-member Lucknow Bench of the high court, while giving reprieve to Pawan Kumar Mittal, also upheld the life sentence of five others in the case but acquitted two other accused — Harish Misra and Sanjay Awasthi, who were given life term.

Manjunath (27) — a sales officer with Indian Oil Corporation and a graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow — paid with his life for exposing an alleged petrol adulteration racket.

The bench comprising Justice KK Misra and Justice DV Sharma pronounced the verdict on appeals by the convicts against the Kheri sessions court judgment passed on March 23, 2007.

Manjunath's father Shanmugham said a decision on challenging the commutation of death penalty will be taken by the trust formed after the murder of his son. IB Singh, lawyer for the trust, said the high court verdict was not a setback. “Our main object was to get the accused convicted and we have achieved our goal by getting them convicted and getting him sentenced to life,” he said.

Manjunath had exposed an adulteration racket at an IOC petrol pump in Lakhimpur Kheri that was owned by the prime accused, Pawan Kumar Mittal, also known as Monu. He was shot dead on November 19, 2005 when he reached the pump to collect samples of adulterated petrol allegedly being sold from the outlet. A chargesheet in the case was filed against the accused on February 15, 2006.

Delivering the verdict, the Kheri judge had said the murder of Manjunath was a pre-planned one because the weapons used in the crime and recovered from the possession of the accused belonged to persons residing in different localities, who had gathered at the site to allegedly eliminate the executive.

The accused had placed Manjunath’s body on the rear seat of a car and deputed two associates to dump it in a canal in Sitapur, according to the prosecution. The accused ran out of luck after a police team on a routine early morning patrol duty spotted the car and noticed that its occupants were behaving abnormally as the car went past the police team, it said.

This left the patrol party suspicious and they chased the car and intercepted it after a hot pursuit. Police recovered the bullet-riddled body of Manjunath and arrested the two car occupants, who then led the police to the other accused. — PTI