Supreme Court Sentences Six Guilty To Life Term in Manjunath Murder Case

11 March, New Delhi

Wednesday sentenced six men held guilty of killing S Manjunath, an Indian Oil Corporation sales manager to life imprisonment. Manjunath had taken on the oil mafia in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh.

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana trashed the appeals filed by the convicts against the 2009 verdict of the Allahabad High Court, which had convicted the six men and acquitted two others in Manjunath murder case.

The twenty-seven year old IIM-Lucknow graduate was shot dead on November 19, 2005, when he had gone to a petrol pump to collect samples and investigate reports of oil adulteration. The pump’s owner Pawan Kumar alias Monu Mittal, is among those found guilty of murder. Manjunath’s bullet riddled body was found in a car.

Terming the murder as pre-determined and planned, the trial court had in 2007 convicted all the eight accused. While Mittal was sentenced to death, the other seven, charged with criminal conspiracy, were sentenced to life term.

Upholding the convictions of six of the eight accused, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had in December 2009 commuted the death sentence of Mittal into life-term and had acquitted two others in the case.