Date:08/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/08/stories/2008080850420100.htm

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HC Bench declines to enhance sentence

Staff Reporter

Victim’s son had filed the petition
7-year jail term sufficient: Judge

MADURAI: The Madras High Court Bench here on Thursday refused to enhance the sentence imposed on four convicts who stabbed a 40-year-old cycle workshop owner to death at Tenkasi in Tirunelveli district 10 years ago.

However, Justice A. Selvam directed the convicts — Meeran Mydeen, Sheik Ali, Mohamed Ismail and Mohamed Haneefa — to pay a fine of Rs.10,000 each. The amount shall be paid as compensation to the son and a daughter of the deceased. In default, the convicts shall undergo six months of prison term in addition to seven years of rigorous imprisonment ordered by the trial court. M. Sheik Mohammed Syed, son of the deceased, had filed a criminal revision petition to enhance the sentence imposed on the convicts. Simultaneously, the convicts also had filed criminal appeals challenging their conviction and sentence.

Disposing of the cases by a common order, Mr. Justice Selvam confirmed the conviction ordered by the Fast Track Court-I in Tirunelveli in May, 2003. He also said that seven years of imprisonment was sufficient enough considering the gravity of the offence and the circumstances under which the incident took place.

The Judge directed the trial court to take necessary steps to incarcerate the convicts who were let out on bail by the High Court while admitting their appeals in 2003. The appeals, along with the revision petition, were transferred from the principal seat of High Court in Chennai to the Madurai Bench in 2004.

According to the prosecution, Mohideen Pitchai alias Chellappa of Tenkasi, was chatting with his aged mother, son and daughter outside his house on September 24, 1998, when the convicts entered into a wordy duel with him. Immediately, the latter stabbed him with a knife in the presence of family members.