The Supreme Court on Monday exempted a person, who along with a co-convict was sentenced to 10-year jail term for attempt to assassinate the then Chief Justice of India AN Ray near the apex court in 1975, from surrendering himself for undergoing the sentence.
"The convict appellant has said that he has been in jail for 14 years and 10 months. He is exempted from surrendering till the disposal of his appeal," a bench comprising justices SJ Mukhopadhya and NV Ramana said.
The court also granted Santoshanand Avadhoot, an Ananda Margi, the leave to challenge the Delhi High Court verdict which, after thirty eight years of filing of appeal, had upheld his conviction and award of 10-year jail term in the case. The High Court had also upheld the conviction and award of 10-year jail term to another accused Sudevanand Avadhoot.
It had, however, set free third convict Ranjan Dwivedi, a lawyer, of the charge of conspiring with the two to bomb the car of the then CJI on the evening of March 20, 1975. The appeals against the trial court's judgement were filed in the High Court in 1976 and the hearing commenced in 2006, after a lapse of three decades.
The convicts were awarded ten years jail term under Section 307 (attempt to murder) of IPC. In a separate offence of conspiracy under Section 120B of IPC, the High Court had reduced the seven years jail term, earlier awarded by the trial court, to four years.
The two convicts were directed by the High Court to surrender before the trial court on August 21 last year to serve the remaining sentence of three years as the sentences of 10 and four years were not concurrent. CBI had said that the two Anandmargis had thrown hand grenades inside the official car of the then CJI AN Ray at a traffic intersection of Tilak Marg and Bhagwan Das Marg near the apex court premises at around 4.15 pm on March 20, 1975, but they did not explode.
Recently, the two convicts of this case, Dwivedi and Gopalji have been held guilty and sentenced to life term by a Delhi court in the murder case of former Railway Minister LN Mishra.
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