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Imprisonment till death for three accused in Naga Vaishnavi murder case
Describing the murder of Naga Vaishnavi as grave, heinous and barbarous, Fifth Additional District and Sessions and Mahila Court Judge M Babitha on Thursday convicted and sentenced three persons accused in the murder of 8-year-old Naga Vaishnavi to imprisonment till death.
Naga Vaishnavi murder case
Vijayawada: Describing the murder of Naga Vaishnavi as grave, heinous and barbarous, Fifth Additional District and Sessions and Mahila Court Judge M Babitha on Thursday convicted and sentenced three persons accused in the murder of 8-year-old Naga Vaishnavi to imprisonment till death.
The verdict against the accused Morla Srinivas, Vemparala Jagadish and Pandi Venkatrao came in a packed court on Thursday. Naga Vaishnavi was kidnapped on January 30, 2010 and the car driver Lakshmana Rao who tried to stop the kidnappers was stabbed to death. Brother of Naga Vaishnavi, who was also in the car, escaped unhurt from the scene.
However, the kidnappers strangled Naga Vaishnavi to death and burnt the body in a blast furnace at Guntur on the same day. Though there are no eyewitnesses to the murder, the court took into consideration the circumstantial evidence, including the diamond ear studs of Naga Vaishnavi which were found in the blast furnace intact leading to the conclusion that the body of Naga Vaishnavi was burnt in it.
Generally, life imprisonment means 14 years in jail. However, the judge categorically stated in the verdict that the accused would be lodged in the prison till death. Interestingly, the judgment also mentioned the term of 8 years the accused spent in the jail so far would be ‘set off’ which means that term would be decreased from the actual sentence.
The 200-page judgment is yet to be released to know what the ‘set off’ actually means. There have been a number of twists and turns in the criminal case wherein the Accused-3 Pandi Venkatrao, who is an advocate by profession and brother of the first wife of Palagani Prabhakar, father of Naga Vaishnavi, trying to prolong the case by filing innumerable petitions in the high court. At one point, the high court even imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on P Venkat Rao for filing frivolous petitions to transfer the venue of the trial to other than Vijayawada.
After the high court cleared the stay order, the trial started in January 2013 and after examining evidence and the 79 prosecution witnesses and 30 defence witnesses, the fifth additional district and sessions and Mahila court found sufficient substance in convicting the accused.
The Court was convinced that the accused indulged in the heinous crime after Palagani Prabhakar, father of Naga Vaishnavi, wanted to bequeath his property to his daughter leaving aside the first wife.
The accused wanted to bring pressure on Prabhakar to stop him from bequeathing all the property in the name of his daughter by kidnapping his children. One of the defence lawyers Chiranjivi said that the verdict would be challenged in the high court.
