Apex Court upholds life term awarded to seven for murder

The Supreme Court has awarded life imprisonment to seven persons for killing a student in 1996 over a row on contesting college election in Dehradun saying "common intention to kill" the victim could not be ruled out.

A bench of justices P C Ghose and R K Agrawal upheld the punishment awarded by the Uttarakhand High Court to Dheeraj Kalra, Rishi Kumar, Som Prakash, Saurabh, Nitin, Bhagat Singh and Sanjeev Kumar for killing Alok Chandana who had refused to withdraw his candidature for the college election.

"We are of the view that in the present case, even if it is assumed that there was no common object of killing, but only of stopping the deceased and others from contesting the elections, it cannot be ruled out that the common intention to kill might have arisen on the spur of the moment.

"The actions of appellants and the injuries inflicted on the body of the deceased also go to substantiate the same," the bench said.

The apex court was hearing appeals filed by the convicts against the high court verdict passed in April 2011 which had confirmed the life term given to them by the trial court.

The trial court had convicted them for offences under section 302 (murder) read with section 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC.