Bareilly: Life imprisonment for five of a family in 2017 honour killing case

BAREILLY: A Bareilly court on Tuesday awarded

life imprisonment to five

members of a family for killing a 22-year-old man over an inter-faith love affair.

The case dates back to September 1, 2017, when the main accused, Prem Pal, along with his father, son and cousins killed Naresh Pal in what was described as an honour killing.

Police had filed a chargesheet against five people -- Prem Pal, Collector Pal, Aijbhaan, Om Pal and Mukesh Kumar. All of them were convicted by the court of the additional sessions judge. A fine of Rs 28,000 was also slapped on each of them.

Divulging details, senior advocate

Santosh Srivastava

told TOI, "Naresh Pal, who is a resident of Bisharatganj area, was in a relationship with Prem Pal's daughter for nearly two years and both wanted to marry but Prem Pal was against their alliance."

He added that according to the victim's sister, the girl's family members barged into Naresh's house one day and dragged him to a primary school, where they hacked him to death. An FIR in this case was registered by Naresh's brother Mukesh Babu under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with deadly weapons), 149 (offence committed in prosecution of common object by unlawful assembly members) 506 (criminal intimidation) and 302 (murder) of IPC at Bisharatganj police station.

"All five accused were arrested and sent to jail but after a charge-sheet was filed in the court, bail was granted to Collector, Mukesh and Om," Srivastava said.

Additional district government counsel Tejpal Singh added, "On the eyewitnesses' testimony, the five were convicted." He added that Collector, Mukesh and Om's bail has been cancelled and that they have been directed to surrender before the court.