Mumbai, Jun 25 The Bombay High Court on Thursday commuted the death penalty of two men convicted in a 2013 kidnapping and murder case of a 22-year-old man in Maharashtra's Nashik district, and instead sentenced them to 30 years in jail.
A bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande partly allowed the appeals filed by the duo, Chetan Yashwantrao Pagare and Aman Prakatsingh Jat, against their conviction and death sentence imposed on them by a Nashik court in 2022.
A detailed high court judgment was not yet available.
According to the prosecution, the victim, Vipin Bafna, a resident of Ojhar in Nashik district, went missing on June 8, 2013, after leaving for a dance class.
His father, Gulabchand Bafna, later informed police that Vipin had called home that night claiming he would stay at a friend's house as he was late for class. However, the dance academy later clarified he had not attended any session at the institute.
The next day, an unidentified caller used Vipin Bafna's mobile phone to demand a ransom of Rs 1 crore from his father, claiming he had been kidnapped. No further contact was made and the phone was subsequently switched off, said the prosecution.
His body was discovered in a field in Adgaon on June 14, 2013.
Police arrested five people and invoked charges of murder and kidnapping besides offences under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the accused.
A special trial court, while imposing the death penalty on the two of the accused, Pagare and Jat, had observed the murder was heinous and diabolical and an offence that shocked the collective conscience of society.
