Four men have been awarded life imprisonment by a Delhi court for killing their neighbour, who refused to give them his mobile phone in lieu of money he had borrowed.
Additional Sessions Judge Gulshan Kumar, however, spared the four convicts -- Ashok Singh, Rajesh, Anil and Sonu -- of the gallows on the ground that the prosecution did not give any special reasons for awarding them death penalty.
"In present case, no special reason has been pointed by the State for awarding death sentence to accused persons. There is nothing in the manner of commissions of the offence, which can be termed as unusual, so as to consider the present case to be one of the rarest of rare cases," the court said.
"Accordingly, the convicts are sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for life...," the court said, imposing a fine of Rs 10,000 on each of them.
According to prosecution, accused Ashok on November 14, 2009 had gone to 30-year-old victim's house and asked for his mobile phone as he was not giving back Rs 10,000 lent to him.
The victim refused and also abused Ashok, the prosecution said.
On the night of the incident, Ashok and his three other associates forcibly entered the victim's flat in south Delhi and thrashed him, it said.
"The accused persons killed the deceased with a knife. There were grievous knife injuries, which caused death of the victim," the police had told the court.
However, the accused pleaded innocence and sought mercy on the ground that they belonged to poor families and have to take care of their kin.
"It will send a wrong message to the society at large. You have committed a crime..," the court said while convicting the four accused.
