A Delhi court has acquitted five persons, accused of abducting and killing a businessman last year, after witnesses turned hostile.
Additional Sessions Judge Manoj Jain held that serious damage has been caused to the prosecution after two material witnesses, including the complainant, turned hostile.
"... It is very much evident and palpable that a serious damage has been caused to the case of prosecution by the aforesaid two material witnesses. They both have turned hostile and have not come up with anything which may connect any accused with the incident in question," the judge said.
According to the prosecution, victim Gurudas was beaten up and abducted on April 10, 2015 from a financial firm's office owned by his friend Besant Kumar, also the complainant in the case.
The gang of five men -- Amit Maan, Ravi, Umed, Ram Singh and Kuldeep -- armed with sticks, barged into the office and ransacked it before abducting Gurudas in a car, it said, adding the businessman's body was fished out of a drain in north Delhi's Jharoda village on April 12, 2015.
Later, complainant Basant Kumar turned hostile and told the court that more than 25 people entered his office and started beating Gurudas, the court noted.
It also observed that Kumar failed to identify the accused paraded by the prosecution.
The second witness, arraigned by the prosecution who was working under the deceased, also turned hostile saying all he saw was a crowd in front of the office, it said.
The court, however, accepted the post-mortem report which concluded that the victim was strangulated to death and also suffered a head injury caused by some blunt object.
The court observed that the hostile witnesses had caused irreparable damage to the case and acquitted the accused.
