Chandigarh, September 21
The families of three Punjabi youth facing capital punishment in a murder and bootlegging case in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) heaved a sigh of relief today as the Appeal Sharia Court in Sharjah today waived their death sentence. Now, they would be serving five-year imprisonment -- three years for murder and two years for illicit liquor trade.

According to latest development, the Sharia Court accepted the settlement reached upon between the families of the victim and the convicts. The trio -- Pradeep Kumar of Fatehgarh Niara in Hoshiarpur, Kashmiri Lal of Bharsingh Pura in Nawanshahr and Tarlochan Singh of Sakroli in Hoshiarpur -- were charged with the murder of Vikramjit Singh of Dyalgarh in Gurdaspur.

The court approved the agreement by which the families of the convicts agreed to pay blood money to the family of the bereaved.

Dubai-based businessman SP Singh Oberoi had submitted to the court a copy of the settlement duly endorsed by the UAE Embassy in New Delhi on August 1 at the time of the last hearing in the case. It was SP Singh who visited the family of the victim and the families of the convicts in Punjab a couple of times in July to organise the settlement.

According to the UAE law, in case the Appeal Sharia Court is convinced that the order of the Sharia Court was unlikely to be set aside, it gives the defence time to go in for the settlement -- diya (blood money) -- with the victim family. Once the court issued the letter to the defence counsel, SP Singh Oberoi started his efforts to save the boys from death penalty.

Notably, since the trio has been lodged in Sharjah Jail for almost two years, there are chances of their getting released within next two-three years.

Meanwhile, in the case of 17 Indian boys facing death penalty in another murder-cum-bootlegging case in Sharjah, the parents of one of the convicts, Taranjit Singh, may visit their son in Sharjah Jail a day before the next hearing in the case on September 29.

Balbir Singh and Sukhwinder Kaur, the parents of Taranjit, could not accompany the relatives of eight other convicts to Dubai at the time of the last hearing on September 1. Then, they had no passports.