Man gets life term for murdering youth

AURANGABAD

: Additional sessions judge K R Choudhari on Thursday sentenced a 33-year-old man to life imprisonment for murdering a youth after he refused to give him Rs 1,300 in 2016.


The court also fined the convict, Jawed Wasi Khan (33) of Sadatnagar railway station, Rs 10,000, failure to pay which would mean additional three months of imprisonment.

Special public prosecutor Rajendra Mugdia said that Jawed and the victim, Akshay Godaskar (22), knew each other. On December 9, 2016, civic sanitation employee Ravindra Salve and one Shaikh Ismail spotted the youth lying in a pool of blood near Sarosh Urdu School in the Padegaon area. They alerted police, following which inspector I M Bahure of the Cantonment police rushed to the spot.

The officer conducted a panchanama and seized nine articles, including clothes, pair of shoes, some bank papers, half burnt cigarette as well as a cigarette packet. He also found the victim’s two-wheeler lying about 1 km away from the murder spot, said the prosecutor.

Bahure immediately called in finger print and forensic experts and alerted Godaskar’s family. The victim’s father, Dnyaneshwar Godaskar, a court employee, lodged a complaint against unknown persons for murdering his son. He told police that Akshay had left home and didn’t return till late. His cell phone was unreachable.

The family thought Akshay might have stayed back with his friends. Further inquiries revealed that he and three of his his friends had drinks in the Beed bypass area and ate a snack at a stall in the railway station area. They were planning to go home between 11 pm and 12 pm, when a man in his thirties wearing a jacket and black trousers arrived at the scene.

Akshay and the man (who later turned out to be Jawed) embraced each other and exchanged pleasantries. Jawed then asked the stall owner take care of his guests well. After a few while he and Akshay left on the latter’s bike saying that they would return in a while. Following this information, the police zeroed in on Jawed on December 10, 2016, who confessed to have murdered his friend for Rs 1,300.

Jawed admitted that he had taken Akshay to a secluded place and asked him to hand over the money. A brawl took place following which he stabbed Akshay to death and escaped from the scene with the money. The police recovered the knife and the cash from his possession.

A total of 22 witnesses were examined and two of them turned hostile. Mugdia said that the finger prints and forensic evidence as well as the witnesses account helped nail the culprit.