INDIA: HIGH COURT UPHOLDS CAPITAL PUNISHMENT FOR MURDER

the Jharkhand High Court, India, upheld the death sentence awarded by a lower court to Ajay Kumar Pal for killing family members of the conservator of forest, Dhirendra Kumar, four years ago. Confirming the verdict here, the bench observed that it was the rarest of rare case and the convict deserves capital punishment. Special CBI judge Mohammad Numan Ali had awarded Pal the death sentence on April 9, 2007, for murdering five persons of Kumar's family and five others on June 2, 2003 in a house at Bariatu here. The victims included Kumar's wife, two children, a nephew and a domestic servant.