A city court Tuesday awarded death sentences to two men convicted in the 2007 rape and murder of a 23-year-old BPO employee, prosecutors said.
Investigating officer Rajendra Patil told journalists after the court verdict that the convicts — driver Purushottam Borade, 30, and his friend Pradeep Kokade, 25 — were given death sentence for raping and murdering Jyotikumari Choudhary, who worked for a call centre of a multi-national company in Pune.
Pune principal district and sessions judge Anant Badar found the duo guilty Monday and the sentencing came a day later.
The special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had made an impassioned plea seeking death sentence for the accused for “a brutal murder and a most heinous crime” that had shocked the city.
However, the verdict can be challenged in a higher court and the convicts have already decided to do so.
Their counsel Atul Patil dismissed the charges against Borade and Kokadar and alleged that police had fabricated evidence against them.
“We shall move the Bombay High Court challenging the death verdict,” Patil said.
Jyotikumari’s brother-in-law Shishir Pundalik said she was originally from Gorakhpur and had come to Pune after she secured a job with Wipro.
“We are satisfied with the justice finally done to her after nearly four years. We have also informed her parents in Gorakhpur,” Pundalik told IANS.
Among other things, judge Badar found Borade and Kokade, both living in Dehu Road on the outskirts of Pune, guilty of charges pertaining to criminal conspiracy, rape, murder and misappropriating property.
The prosecution said the duo hatched a conspiracy to rape Jyotikumari when she was busy speaking on her cell-phone.
They overpowered her, then cut her wrists and inflicted three injuries on her body with a sharp weapon before raping her and finally strangling her to death, Nikam said.
On the night of Nov 1, 2007, the victim was on her way to her office in Hinjewadi on the outskirts of Pune in her office cab, driven by Borade with Kokade sitting beside him.
On the pretext of picking up another colleague, they diverted the car to an isolated spot near a bypass on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
They assaulted the victim, raped her, smashed her face with a stone, strangulated her and dumped her body before returning to their office, according to police investigations.
The following day, Talegaon Dabhade police recovered her mangled body from the site near Gavhunje village.
Following a public outcry, the police swung into action and nabbed the two culprits within Nov 3 that year.