The defence lawyer for gangster Abu Salem's driver, Mehendi Hasan Wednesday told a special court that the driver was not an arraigned as accused for 10 years after the builder Pradeep Jain was killed, as grounds for awarding minimum sentence to him in the builder's murder case. Hasan was booked for procuring of firearms which were used to shoot the builder 17 times on March 1995 and for hiring the four assailants who shot him. "It was their objective to eliminate of the Jain's for which these firearms were used," the judge had observed, while convicting him for the crime on February 16. A Special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) court also convicted extradited gangster, Salem for orchestrating the crime and another builder in the case. The special public prosecutor sought death penalty as punishment for Hasan, for playing a key role in the conspiracy. The lawyer, S Pasbola argued that Hasan has not played a significant part in the criminal conspiracy and that he remained in the fringes. He also told the court that the main objective of the conspiracy was to extort money and a land property from the Jain family, and that murder was only an alternate plan in the conspiracy. A sessions court had earlier convicted and sentenced two assailants to life imprisonment. Reminding the court that two assailants were convicted and sentenced to life by a sessions court in the past, Pasbola contended that the Hasan's role in the case was "far less" grievous. "He was not directly executing the criminal conspiracy, nor was he present or planned the actual murder of Jain," Pasbol argued. Pasbola also submitted that Hasan has already served ten years in jail and he is not implicated in any other criminal case. The prosecution sought seven years of imprisonment for another 60-year-old convict in the case, Virendra Jhamb, for selling Jain's property and sending the money through hawala transaction to Salem in Dubai. The defence lawyer for Jhamb, Shrikant Shivde argued that he was old and even a "month's sentence would be equivalent to sentencing him for life" as he has undergone two bypass surgeries and and was suffering from Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease. The special court had directed Jhamb's probation officer to file a report on Jhambs condition. The court has reserved its order on the quantum of punishment to be awarded to the three convicts in the case till Friday.
