2012 murder of lawyer: HC upholds life sentence of security guard

Mumbai, Nov 10 (PTI) The Bombay High Court on Monday upheld the conviction and life sentence imposed on a security guard for the murder of Mumbai-based lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012.

A bench of Justices A S Gadkari and Neela Gokhale dismissed the appeals filed by the Maharashtra government and Purkayastha's father seeking enhancement of the life sentence imposed on the convict, Sajjad Mugal Pathan.

The court also dismissed the appeal filed by Pathan, challenging his conviction and sentence.

In July 2015, a sessions court convicted and sentenced Pathan to life imprisonment for murdering Purkayastha, a lawyer by profession.

The trial court had refused to hand down the death penalty to Pathan after observing that the case did not fall under the purview of 'rarest of rare'.

Pathan, a security guard at the building where Purkayastha lived in Mumbai, was convicted for murder, molestation and criminal trespass.

Purkayastha, daughter of an IAS officer based in Delhi, worked as a legal advisor with actor-director Farhan Akhtar's firm Excel Entertainment Private Limited.

She and her partner Avik Sengupta lived in a rented flat in Mumbai's Wadala area. On August 9, 2012, Purkayastha was found murdered in her flat.

The city police arrested Pathan at the Mumbai Central railway station the next day, before he could catch a train to Surat from where he had allegedly planned to flee to Jammu and Kashmir, his native place.

According to the police, Pathan had deliberately cut off the power supply to Purkayastha's flat sometime before the murder, following which she had to call electricians and get it restored, giving Pathan the opportunity to enter her house and steal a set of keys.

On the intervening night of August 8 and August 9, Pathan entered the house using the keys and tried to molest Purkayastha.

When she resisted and tried to escape, he slashed her throat and left the house. On the morning of August 9, Avik returned home from work and found Purkayastha's body lying in a pool of blood.

In February 2016, the Nashik jail authorities granted parole to Pathan, but he failed to report back to jail after the given time period.

He was later arrested in 2023. PTI SP GK