City court awards life term to repeat offender

The court also fined him of Rs 1 lakh and directed that the amount be paid to the kin of the victim.

A Delhi court has awarded life imprisonment to a repeat offender for murdering a youth for monetary gain and expressed concern over the rising crime graph in the national capital. The court held the accused Chanderjeet — a resident of Bihar — guilty of murdering Arun Mandal in 2007.

“Having considered the submissions and the various aggravating and mitigating factors, I hold that the case in hand certainly does not fall within the category of ‘rarest of rare’ or least even in category of ‘rare case’… I hereby award rigorous imprisonment for life sentence to the convict Chanderjeet,” Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said.

The court also fined him of Rs 1 lakh and directed that the amount be paid to the kin of the victim. The court observed that “inadequate sentence” in the repeat offenders, “undermines” the public confidence in the efficacy of law.

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“Undue sympathy to impose inadequate sentence upon the convicts who are repeat offenders would do more harm to the justice system to undermine the public confidence in the efficacy of law and society cannot long endure under such serious threats,” the judge said.

Observing a rise in the crime in the city, the court said, “The deteriorating law and order problem of the city is a matter of serious concern and immediate steps are required to be taken at all levels to ensure security and safety of the citizens.”

According to prosecution, Chanderjeet, who was absconding in a firing case at Udyog Vihar area of Gurgaon, was in need of money to meet his expenses. He demanded Rs 50,000 from Arun Mandal who was running a dental lab in Delhi and previously known to him. When Mandal refused to pay, Chanderjeet shot him in his house on January 8, 2007.

Kaunain Sheriff M

Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies. With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health. His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award. Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time. Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More

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