A Mumbai court on Thursday reserved its order on the Pallavi Purkayastha murder case, even as the prosecutor demanded the death penalty for prime accused Sajjad Ahmed Pathan.
Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said seeing the brutality of the murder; it showed that the accused had planned the crime meticulously.
"In the Pallavi murder case I have demanded the death penalty for the accused Sajjad Pathan on ten grounds. The accused had made preparations in advance for committing murder because he already had the duplicate keys and knife when he entered the flat with the intention to ravish her. Pathan was working as a security guard, so Pallavi trusted him and called the electrician through him. When Pathan came to know that Pallavi is alone in her flat, he took advantage of it. Pathan betrayed Pallavi's faith and confidence, and this is highest order of betrayal. The manner in which the accused had committed the crime is most ghastly murder of Pallavi, because he first slit her throat so that she couldn't shout or call someone for help," said Nikam.
"The post-mortem report shows that Pallavi sustained a total of 16 injuries.I urged before court that this is the rarest of rare crime,therefore, the accused should be awarded the death penalty. The court has reserved the order and will give the judgment on July 7," he added.
"However, contradicting the prosecutor's charges, Pathan's lawyer Wahab Khan argued, "I pointed out that at the time of incident, Sajjad was 22-years-old, but the prosecution said that he was 25, so I presented the document. On the incident night, at 12: 45 a.m. he received around five calls withen a gap of two to three minutes, and when the deceased called him into the house, till that time, there was no preparations, no motive, nothing. I further argued to the court that there are no evidence and the court has held him guilty on the basis of influences from circumstances, and what exactly transpired, no one knows. I also cited some Supreme Court judgments which say that under this situation, life should be awarded not death."
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"Pathan is a migrating labor, because of the poor condition in Kashmir and separation from his family. He left his parents, two younger brothers and a sister and came to Mumbai.Till the date of incident, he was working honestly with no complaint from any male or female member of the apartment block," he added.
On June 30, Pathan was found to be guilty by a Mumbai court of murdering Purkayastha in her apartment in Wadala on August 9, 2012.
According to the police, Purkayastha was murdered by Pathan in a premeditated 'act of perversion'.
Pallavi's fiance, Avik Sengupta, who had been living with her, found her body lying in a pool of blood.
Sengupta was a crucial witness and had testified in the case. However, he died of an illness on November 14 last year. Pallavi's Parents had also demanded death penalty for the accused.
