Begin typing your search above and press return to search.

4 rape-murder convicts surrender in Jorhat court

By CORRESPONDENT

JORHAT, Feb 18 � Four convicts, including three tea garden officials and a former welfare officer, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Gauhati High Court in November 2013 in the case of an alleged gangrape and murder of a 14-year-old girl at a tea estate, have surrendered before the Court of District Sessions Judge, Jorhat, on Tuesday.

All of them � Anjan Sarma, Pratik Dutta, Akhil Bordoloi and Dhrubajyoti Bhuyan � were sent to the Central Jail here by the court after their surrender. However, another convict, Jit Kakoty, remains absconding.

On November 11 last year, the division bench of Justice K Sreedhar Rao and Justice BD Agarwal in the High Court had passed the order after they were held guilty in connection with the rape and murder of the Class IX student whose severed body was found beside a railway track near the Gatanga tea estate on December 1992.

Though all the accused were brought to book on the basis of an FIR lodged by the girl�s brother, the then District and Sessions Judge of Jorhat, D K Mahanta, acquitted them due to insufficient evidence in 2003.

However, in response to a criminal appeal filed by the State government challenging the 2003 Jorhat Sessions Court verdict acquitting all the five accused, the Gauhati High Court upheld the Sessions Judge�s order.

Though the convicts moved the Supreme Court for relaxing their punishment ordered by the High Court, the Apex Court asked them to surrender before the trial court, which sent them to the jail on Tuesday.

Next Story