Malappuram (Kerala), February 20 A court here on Friday sentenced five men to life imprisonment for beating a 42-year-old man to death in 2016 in a suspected case of moral policing in Mankada.
Additional District and Sessions Judge I Thushar M sentenced the five men – Abdul Nazar, Sharafudheen, Suhail, Abdul Gafoora, and Sakkeer Hussain – to life imprisonment and stated that such instances of mob violence should be discouraged, special public prosecutor (SPP) P G Mathew told reporters outside the court.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 85,000 on the accused and said that if the amount was recovered from them, it should be given to the victim's legal heirs.
The court had on February 17 convicted the five accused for offenses under sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with a deadly weapon), 449 (house-trespass), and 302 (murder) of the IPC.
Besides that, it had also convicted Suhail and Sakkeer Hussain under section 201 (destruction of evidence) of the IPC, the SPP said.
The prosecutor further stated that the victim – Nasir Hussain – had gone to his female friend's home with her consent, but the accused forcibly entered the house and cruelly beat him to death with wooden sticks and logs.
He said that the accused did not allow anyone to even give water to the victim and prevented him from being taken to the hospital.
"The court considered this to be an act intended to kill him," the prosecutor said.
The SPP further stated that the court, based on Supreme Court decisions, also considered such an incident to be an act of "terrorism".