Chandigarh: Punjab and Haryana High Court
today admitted the appeal of seven convicts, who had recently
been sentenced by a Karnal court in a double murder case of a
couple allegedly on the diktats of a Khap Panchayat.
A division bench of the Punjab and Haryana Court
comprising Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Jaswant Singh
took up and admitted the appeal of the convicts challenging
the different sentences awarded to them in the case by the
Karnal court.
While five of the convicts had been awarded death
penalty, a Khap Panchayat leader had been awarded life
imprisonment and another person handed down seven year
imprisonment in the case.
However, the high court declined Khap leader Ganga Raj`s
plea seeking parole on the grounds that he was to get his son
admitted in an educational course.
In 2007, Manoj (23) and Babli (19), residents of village
Banawala in Karnal, had got married against the wishes of the
girl`s parents who objected to the match as the two belonged
to the same `gotra` (clan).
Later, Gurdev Singh, Suresh Kumar, Rajinder Singh, Satish
Kumar and Baru Ram had been held guilty in the case for brutal
murder and sentenced to death penalty while Ganga Raj was
sentenced to life imprisonment and Mandeep who was held guilty
only for abduction was sentenced seven years` imprisonment by
the Karnal court.
-PTI
