By IANS
Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu) : A local court awarded death penalty to a 30-year-old man for killing his parents and grandmother over a land dispute – in the first capital punishment pronounced in this Tamil Nadu district in the past three decades.
Sessions’ Judge Jafarullah found 30-year-old Rajesh guilty under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The incident took place in 2006 in Kapisthalam, 300 km south of Chennai.
“The accused deserves no mercy as he took three lives of his close relatives for property less than an acre in extent. The punishment should serve as a warning to those who kill out of greed,” the judge said in his order Friday.
Though the death sentence has been pronounced, it may take several years for appeals in higher courts to be heard and the final disposal of clemency petitions by the president.
Three death-row convicts of Tamil Nadu involved in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, despite having exhausted all clemency appeals, have requested that their pending capital punishments be commuted to life sentences.
Their defence counsels have gone to the extent of asking the courts to release the convicts forthwith as “the painful suspense of more than a decade was worse than death itself”.