A Delhi court Monday reserved for Dec 18 its order on sentencing of the four convicts in the 1975 murder of then railway minister Lalit Narayan Mishra after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) left it to the court's discretion whether the convicts deserved the death penalty.
District Judge Vinod Goel last week held four followers of Hindu sect Anand Marg guilty of killing Mishra 39 years ago. The court order on sentencing came after defence counsel and prosecution concluded arguments on the quantum of punishment for the convicts.
Advancing arguments on quantum of punishment, CBI special public prosecutor N.K. Sharma termed the attack on then railway minister Mishra as a terrorist act done to spread panic.
Advocate Sharma left it to the court to decide whether the case falls under the category of "rarest of rare" warranting the extreme sentence and said that the four men are convicted under sections dealing with murder that entail a minimum punishment of life imprisonment and maximum of death penalty.
Gopalji (73), Ranjan Dwivedi (66), Santoshanand Avadhuta (75) and Sudevananda Avadhuta (78) were convicted on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy and voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapon.
Santoshanand Avadhuta and Sudevananda Avadhuta were also convicted under various provisions of the Explosive Substances Act.
Seeking a lenient view for the three convicts, Santoshanand, Sudevanand and Gopalji, their counsel told court that they are sanyasis and not a threat to society. Defence counsel also cited old age and medical grounds for leniency to them.
Defence counsel of Sudevanand, Feroze Ahmad, told the court that his client is innocent and the case does not fall under the rarest of rare case.
Ranjan Dwivedi, a convict and lawyer by profession, claiming innocence told the court that his conviction was his "destiny" and there was no provision in the law of recalling the order by a trial court judge.
He said: "I will not go against my conscience and will not seek mercy, otherwise I would die hundred times before my death."
The court heard the arguments on quantum of sentence despite the lawyers being on strike for the past one week.
All the four convicts, who were out on bail, were taken into custody after the court orders Dec 8.
Santoshanand Avadhuta and Sudevananda Avadhuta have already spent over 12 years in jail while Gopalji had remained behind bars for 11 years in this case. Dwivedi was in jail for three years.
Mishra went to Samastipur in Bihar Jan 2, 1975, to declare open the Samastipur-Muzaffarpur broad gauge railway line.
A bomb explosion on the dais seriously injured him.
He was rushed to the railway hospital at Danapur, near Patna, where he died the following day.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that Anand Margis had carried out the attack on Mishra to put pressure on the government to release one of the group's leaders.
The Supreme Court transferred the case to Delhi in 1979. The charges against the accused were framed in 1981.
On the direction of the apex court, the lower court here began hearing the final arguments in the 39-year-old case on a daily basis since September 2012.
The apex court in August 2012 dismissed the accused's plea to terminate the proceedings, ruling that this could not be done merely because the proceedings had not been concluded in the past 37 years.
The apex court directed the trial court not to entertain any plea for unwarranted adjournment.
Over 160 prosecution witnesses, five court witnesses and around 40 defence witnesses were examined in this case.
