The Bombay High Court on Monday dismissed petitions seeking a death penalty for a security guard convicted for the murder of Mumbai-based lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012.
The plea, filed by the lawyer's father Atanu Purkayastha and Maharashtra government, sought to enhance the convicted security guard Sajjad Pathan's sentence from life imprisonment to a death penalty.
The court also dismissed an appeal filed by Pathan challenging life sentence awarded to him.
Pathan who was convicted by a sessions court in July 2014 for the murder, molestation and criminal trespass in the killing of the then 25-year-old lawyer, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The sessions court had held that the case did not fall in the "rarest of rare" category that would warrant capital punishment.
Pallavi Purkayastha was found murdered in her Wadala flat on August 9, 2012. Investigators said the entry was made using stolen keys and that evidence at the scene showed the victim resisted the attack. The killing shocked the city and prompted a lengthy criminal probe.
In March 2016, Pathan was granted parole from Nashik jail to visit ailing relatives. He failed to return to custody and was missing for over a year before being arrested from Jammu and Kashmir in October 2017 following a coordinated police operation. Courts later sentenced him to an additional term for jumping parole.
The move to seek a death sentence was driven by a revision petition filed by IAS officer Atanu Purkayastha, who argued that the brutality of the offence and the accused's conduct after conviction warranted enhancement of punishment.
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