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[aryan]

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Bench of Allahabad high court commuted the death sentence of the main convict to life sentence in the Manjunath Shanmugam murder case of 2005.

The court upheld the life sentence of five others but acquitted two other accused in the case.

The double bench hearing the case comprising Justice K K Mishra and Justice D V Sharma, concluded the hearing into the case on Thursday.

The court felt this did not amount to the rarest of rare cases and so the death sentence was commuted.

A management graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L), Manjunath was working as a sales officer with the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). He had exposed an adulteration racket at an IOC petrol pump in Lakhimpur Kheri that was owned by Pawan. He was shot dead on November 19, 2005, when he reached the gas station of the accused to collect samples of adulterated petrol that was being allegedly sold from the gas station.

The case came before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court for confirmation of the death sentence awarded to the prime accused in the murder case, Monu Mittal alias Pawan. The remaining 7 accused in the case were awarded sentences extending up to life terms by the district sessions judge (DSJ) Lakhimpur Kheri, S M A Abidi, in March 2007.

Delivering the verdict, the DSJ at that time had said that the murder of Manjunath, 27, on November 19, 2005, was a pre-planned one because the weapons used in the crime and recovered from the possession of the accused, belonged to persons residing in different localities, who had gathered at the site to murder Manjunath.

The accused had placed Manjunath's body on the rear seat of a car and deputed two of their associates to dispose off the body in a canal in Sitapur. The accused ran out of luck after a police team on routine early morning patrol duty spotted the car and noticed that its occupants were behaving abnormally as the car went past the police team.

This left the patrol party suspicious and they chased the car and intercepted it after a hot pursuit. Police recovered the bullet-riddled body of Manjunath and arrested the two car occupants, who then led the police to the other accused.