By IANS,
New Delhi : A city court Monday sentenced five men to life imprisonment for kidnapping a businessman for ransom and expressed concern at instances of abduction increasingly acquiring an industry status.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs.50,000 each on convicts Amar Misra, Satbir, Ravi, Mukesh and Rajender, after holding them guilty of kidnapping Sukhdayal Malik, a businessman dealing in spare parts, on July 16, 1994.
Additional Sessions Judge S.S. Rathi in his order lent credence to tape-recorded conversations of the convicts demanding Rs.2 million for release of the victim who was rescued by the police after four days in captivity.
“The motive behind these kidnappings is always either money or release of other dreaded criminals as in the Kandahar hijacking where a planeload of Indian citizens was kidnapped from Nepal and kept in detention at Kandahar by terrorists to secure release of dreaded mastermind like Masood Azhar and they eventually succeeded,” the court said.
“Despite provision of death sentence by Parliament, the instances of kidnapping for ransom are increasing day by day and it is now being tagged as an industry in the criminal world,” the judge said.