Mandar Surlakar killers sentenced to life
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 24 June 2014 15:34 IST
All four young accused have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the Mandar Surlakar murder case, after a trial for six long years.
Surlakar, then a 17-year old DJ, was mercilessly killed by his college-going friends of similar age, while demanding a ransom of Rs 50 lakh from his builder father.
The accused are Rohan Dhungat, Shaikh Nafiaz Mamlekar, Shankar Tiwari and Ryan Pinto.
They have been held guilty by Children’s Court judge P B Deshpande for murder, kidnapping for ransom, conspiracy and destroying evidence.
The whole state was shaken up with the incident, which took place on 14 August 2006, on the eve of Independence Day.
The young college going friends of Mandar had kidnapped him from Vasco while demanding Rs 50 lakh from his father Dipak.
After realising that the father cannot pay the ransom amount while a police complaint has already been filed about the missing son, the four students tied him up in a gunny bag, injected him and then killed him in a house of Pinto, at Ucassaim. His body was then thrown in a valley at Keri in Ponda.
The police began investigating after taking into custody Rohan and Shankar, who had taken Mandar along with them in a car.
While then Panaji police inspector Mahesh Gaonkar cracked the case within 24 hours by arresting all the five accused, Al Saleha Began turned approver in the case later.
The trial in the Children’s court got delayed for a while as the court had no judge appointed for some time.
It resumed only after the Bombay high court directed the government to appoint a judge, based on a petition filed by one of the accused.
The over 2000-page chargesheet contained statements recorded of around 150, including 57 witnesses.
Adv Pratima Vernekar argued on behalf of the state while the accused had different lawyers form Goa and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra.
It is sad since the victim lost his life as well the convicts has to pass their time inside lock-up at prime age.Indeed court should have awareded death sentence for Ryan Pinto who was main planner as well killer of innocent Mandur.