DESCRIBING him as a remorseless killer and a heinous criminal whose act was a blot on humanity,a Pune court Monday sentenced Maharashtra state transport bus driver Santosh Maruti Mane to death for killing nine people in the city in a bizarre bus rampage last year. Manes crime of using a bus as a weapon fell in the rarest of the rare category due to the revolting and ghastly manner in which the massacre was carried out,additional sessions judge V K Shewale said. On January 25,2012,Mane,41,mowed down nine people and injured 37 in a killing spree that lasted about 40 minutes on a 15-km stretch. You were fully aware that innocent people were being killed. Several people. appealed to you to stop when you crushed your first victim. But you,in your arrogance,continued driving the bus. with all knowledge and intention, the judge said. Your act is inhuman,ghastly and immensely illegal. If I give you a punishment less than death,I would be undermining the law. Lawyers defending Mane had pleaded that he had committed the act in a fit of insanity. The judge,however,relied on the testimony of Manes colleagues to conclude that when he committed the act,Mane was in a completely sound mental condition.
