A Delhi court has lauded the city police for its "serious efforts" to bring to book a stalker who shot dead a 21-year-old Delhi University student outside her college in 2011.
Additional Sessions Judge Vivek Kumar Guliya, while awarding life term to the killer for the offences of murder and illegal possession of arms, praised investigating officer (IO) Inspector Balram and his team for collecting concrete evidence in the case without delay.
"The court deems it necessary to record appreciation for the serious efforts made by IO Inspector Balram and his team to arrest real culprits without any delay and in collecting concrete evidence, in absence of which it would have been difficult to establish the charges and to provide justice to the victim," the judge said.
Radhika, a second year student, was shot from behind by convict Vijay Saini near a foot overbridge outside Ramlal Anand College near Dhaula Kuan here on March 8, 2011.
According to the police, Saini used to stalk Tanwar regularly, but when she rejected him, he shot her dead.
Three other men - Tabrez Ahmed, Sheikh Shekhu and Ashraf Ali - were also involved in the incident. They were held guilty of the offences of harbouring as they gave shelter to Saini after he killed the woman but sentenced to the period already spent by them behind bars.
The court, while convicting all four men, relied on the circumstantial evidence and noted that Saini was thrashed earlier after Tanwar made a complaint of stalking against him.
"There was fairly strong motive for Vijay Saini to commit the murder of Radhika Tanwar," it said.
The sentence was welcomed by the victim's parents and uncle whose six-year long battle for justice finally ended. They thanked the judiciary, Joint Commissioner of Police H G S Dhaliwal and the investigating officer, who were present in the court room.
"We are grateful to the judiciary and the police officers for the support and delivering justice. The killer has been brought to book," said Satish, Radhika's uncle.
The court while convicting all the accused, relied on the forensic report, post-mortem report, testimonies of eye witnesses and other prosecution witnesses.
It also observed that the killer gave a false statement that he did not know the co-accused and could not explain why he had abruptly left his job in Delhi and immediately fled to Mumbai after the incident, which went against him.
According to the prosecution, Saini had been stalking Radhika for 2-3 years and was even beaten up by her father and friends for bothering her. When he did not get a favourable response, he shot her dead to wreak vengeance.
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