Three given death sentence for murdering 4-year old boy in Shimla

The child was allegedly kept naked in that house for seven days after the abduction and on June 21, 2014, he was killed.
Three given death sentence for murdering 4-year old boy in Shimla

CHANDIGARH: All the three accused have been sentenced to death in the murder and kidnapping of 4-year old Yug Gupta who was murdered in 2014 in Shimla.

District and Sessions Judge of Shimla, Virender Singh on Wednesday pronounced death sentence on all three accused Chander Sharma, Tajender and Vikrant for the murder of Yug. He delivered the judgement while standing in the open court.

At the same time, he gave a time of one month to file an appeal in the Himachal Pradesh High Court. Earlier, on August 6 he had held all three guilty in the murder of the four-year-old. Yug Gupta's father Vinod Gupta, mother and grandmother were in tears as the quantum of sentence was pronounced.

Yug was kidnapped from outside his house in busy Ram Bazar area of Shimla on June 14, 2014 by his neighbour Chander Sharma by offering a chocolate and he took him to Tajender Singh's godown situated just above the child's house and from there he took the child to a rented house in Ram Chandera Chowk in sports utility vehicle (SUV) which belonged to Singh and the rented house was taken on rent by Sharma through OLX.

The child was allegedly kept naked in that house for seven days after the abduction and on June 21, 2014, he was killed. In order to mislead the police his clothes were burnt in order to destroy the evidence.

The skeletal remains of the child were recovered by the CID (Crime) branch of Himachal Pradesh Police two years later from a water tank of Shimla Municipal Corporation in Kelston area on August 21, 2016.

The accused had allegedly asked for a ransom of Rs 3.6 crore from the boy's father and they had sent him a letter on June 27, 2014, demanding the ransom, six days after they had killed the child. Then they subsequently sent three more such letters.

Police sources said that the other accused Tajender and Vikrant were against killing the child, but Sharma insisted that if they let go of the child he would reveal their identities. In the charge sheet filed against the accused on October 25, 2016, the police had also attached ten reports included DNA report pertaining to a matching of remains of the child with his pareatomic report ascertaining that he was dumped in water alive and biological reports.

It had made 114 persons as witnesses and recorded the statements of over 100 persons. The mastermind Chander Sharma was a law student, whose father runs a grocery store at Ram Bazaar in Shimla, while Vikrant was an engineering student and Tajender Singh a financier.

The police had booked all the three accused under sections 302, 201, 342, 364 A and 120 B of the IPC and they are currently in judicial custody. The locals had then come out on the road demonstrations, hunger strikes and candlelight marches beside the markets were closed and protests were also held outside the Vidhan Sabha from where the protesters marched to the high court demanding justice for Yug and arrest of the culprits.

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