Life in jail to man who burnt auto driver alive over monetary dispute

New Delhi: A local court has now sentenced a man to life in jail for burning an autorickshaw driver alive inside his home in Nand Nagri in 2015 over a monetary dispute they were having. Also imposing a fine of Rs 7,000 on the convict Rohit Kumar, Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Bedi awarded a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family of the deceased.

As per the case records, the victim, Vijay Arora, a 50-year-old autorickshaw driver, had lent Rs 70,000 to Kumar. He had been asking Kumar to return the loan amount regularly and in early August of 2015, Kumar went to Arora's house in Nand Nagri.

Seeing that Arora was asleep in his bed, Kumar poured kerosene all over him and set him on fire, before locking the room from outside and letting him burn to death. Case records showed that the convict, after locking the room, said, "Here, take you Rs 70,000 (translated from Hindi)".

While convicting Kumar, the court had held, "There is nothing to suggest that the accused had burnt the deceased in the 'heat of the moment'. On the contrary, (the) deceased mentioned in his dying declaration that he had lent money to the accused and he was quarrelling over its return for two-three days and the same proves that (the) accused had intention as well as motive to kill the deceased."

Significantly, Kumar had also filed a petition, claiming that he was being framed by the police in this case. He had added in the plea that Arora was a good friend of his and had also owed money to other people. To this, the court had said, "the plea seems to be an afterthought and vague".

The court added that none of what was claimed by the accused was put to any of the prosecution witnesses during the course of the proceedings in the case.