Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday confirmed the life sentence of Sajjad Mugal Pathan, convicted for killing lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012.
Appeal Dismissed
A bench of Justices Ajey Gadkari and Neela Gokhale dismissed an appeal by the state government seeking death sentence for Pathan. The court also dismissed an appeal by Pathan challenging life sentence awarded to him by sessions court in 2014.
Pallavi’s father, retired IAS official Atanu Purkayastha, had also filed a plea seeking enhancement of life sentence of Pathan. He contended that the sentence awarded by the sessions court was not proportionate to the “heinousness of the gruesome murder”.
The sessions court, in July 2014, had convicted Pathan, a security guard at the building where the 25-year-old Pallavi was staying--for murder, molestation and criminal trespass, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The sessions court had refused to award the death penalty, as sought by the prosecution, observing that the case didn't fit into the “rarest of rare” criteria.
On August 9 of 2012, Pallavi was found dead, with her throat slit at her rented 16th floor apartment in Wadala. She worked as a legal advisor with actor-director Farhan Akhtar’s firm Excel Entertainment Private Limited.
She used to stay with her partner Avik Sengupta. Avik returned home from work and found her body lying in a pool of blood.
The city police arrested Pathan at the Mumbai Central railway terminus before he could catch a train to Surat from where he had planned to flee to Jammu and Kashmir, his native.
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