Bareilly: A trial court in Bareilly took as many as 29 years to sentence two men to five years in jail for stealing Rs 370 from a man, says a Times of India report.
Besides sentencing the accused, the court of the additional district and sessions judge in Bareilly also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 each them. A third accused died in 2004.
On October 21, 1988, the three accused Chandra Pal, Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh befriended one Wajid Hussain, who was travelling from Shahjahanpur to Punjab for a job. They offered Hussain a tea laced with drugs and then robbed him of Rs 370 that he had in his pocket.
“An FIR was lodged against three people under IPC Sections 379 (theft), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) . In 2004, it came to light that Pal had died. Then the case was transferred to the court of the additional district and sessions judge against Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh,” Additional district governor counsel Suresh Babu Sahu was quoted by Times of India as saying.
The two accused Lal and Sarvesh, now in their 60s, have grown-up sons and daughters in their native village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi. Regretting the “gross mistake” they committed back in 1988, they said that the trail was the real punishment for them and not the two-year sentence they have been given. “The closure is a cause for happiness, “Sarvesh said.