2012 woman lawyer’s murder: Bombay HC upholds convict security guard’s life term

Mumbai, Nov 10 Rejecting a plea to hang the murderer, the Bombay High Court on Monday confirmed the life sentence awarded to security guard Sajjad Mugal Pathan, convicted for killing Mumbai lawyer and former bureaucrat’s daughter Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012.

The 25-year-old victim was a legal advisor with actor-director Farhan Akhtar’s firm Excel Entertainment at the time of the incident.

A bench of Justices Ajey Gadkari and Neela Gokhale dismissed an appeal by the state government and the victim’s parents seeking a death sentence for Pathan, a native of Jammu and Kashmir and then a security guard in Pallavi's building in Wadala East.

The bench simultaneously upheld the life sentence awarded to Pathan by the trial court, rejecting the convict’s plea against the 2014 decision of the sessions court to hold him guilty of murder, molestation and criminal trespass.

Pallavi’s father, Atanu Purkayastha, a retired IAS official, had appealed to the High Court to enhance Pathan’s sentence from a life term to the death penalty.

He filed an appeal in the High Court in 2022 seeking a review of the trial court’s decision to award the convict a life sentence. Following his appeal, the HC issued notice to Pathan in September 2022.

He claimed that the incident fitted into the “rarest of rates” criteria and the convict deserved to be hanged for the heinousness of the gruesome murder.

The High Court had concluded the proceedings on August 14, after hearing arguments of the prosecution and defence, and reserved the order for pronouncing judgment later.

Pallavi was found murdered in her rented flat on August 9, 2012. Her throat was slit and her body was lying in a pool of blood on her rented 16th floor of the Himalayan Heights Apartment in Wadala East.

The case attracted public attention due to the young lawyer’s association as a legal advisor with actor-director Farhan Akhtar’s firm, Excel Entertainment.

At the time of her murder, Pallavi was living in a rented flat with her partner Avik Sengupta.

Pathan was arrested at the Mumbai Central railway terminus minutes before he was planning to board a train to Surat.

While sentencing the convict to a life term, the sessions court had directed that he would remain imprisoned for the rest of his life.

In 2016, Pathan was released from jail on parole, but he went underground and was declared untraceable. After about a year, the Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch arrested him in Kashmir.

--IANS

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