KOLKATA: A city court today sentenced eight persons, including three Pakistani nationals, to life imprisonment for abducting Khadim shoe company owner Partha Roy Burman in 2001.
Five other convicts are already serving life sentence in connection with the sensational abduction that took place 16 years ago at Tiljala in east Kolkata.
Additional Sessions Judge Arun Kiran Banerjee of Alipore court pronounced the sentence in a special court set up inside Alipore Correctional Home, where the eight were tried, owing to security reasons.
Banerjee directed that the eight persons, convicted on the charge of abducting for ransom, would undergo rigorous life imprisonment and pay a fine of Rs three lakh each, failing which they would remain in jail for another two years.
In connection with the charge of wrongful confinement, they were separately sentenced to one year each in jail.
Both the jail terms would continue concurrently, the judge ordered.
He declared the eight persons guilty of abduction for ransom and wrongful confinement on December 8, and had said that the quantum of sentence would be pronounced today.
The convicted persons are Mizanur Rahman, Mozammel Sheikh, Nayeem, Noor Mohammed, Dilshad alias Khalid Mehmood, Akhtar, Arshad and Jalal Mollah alias Omar.
Out of the eight, Arshad, Dilshad and Nayeem are Pakistani citizens.
The shoe baron was abducted in 2001 from C N Roy Road in Tiljala area in south-east Kolkata, and was released after alleged payment of ransom.
The state CID, which investigated the case, had got the custody of the eight accused in 2010. Their trial in the abduction of the shoe baron was held after conviction and sentencing of five other persons, who were arrested earlier.
A special court had in May 2009 awarded life sentence to the five accused in the case.
Among those convicted in 2009 was Aftab Ansari, a death row convict in the American Cultural Centre attack case of April, 2002.
The other four were Abdul Rahaman Akunji, Akib Ali, Sauqat and Harpreet alias Happy Singh.