INDIA: JAMMU AND KASHMIR HIGH COURT UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE OF GUNMAN

September 13, 2013: Jammu and Kashmir High Court upheld the death sentence of a counter-insurgent gunman for killing five persons including four of a family in 1997 in Kupwara district.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Virender Singh and Justice M H Attar upheld the death sentence awarded to Ghulam Mohiuddin Wani by the Sessions Court Kupwara in 2009, state government counsel Reyaz Ahmad Khan said.
The order, upholding the death sentence, was announced by Justice Attar, Khan said. According to the case details, Wani, who was working with security forces, had barged into house of Mohammad Yousuf Ganaie at village Vilkal in Kupwara on March 16, 1997 and opened indiscriminate firing on the inmates.
Ganaie, his wife and two minor children were killed in the firing. Wani had then barged in another house in the neighbourhood and shot dead a policeman Mohammad Ishaq.
Wani was convicted by the Sessions Court of the offences under sections 302 (Murder) and 449 (House trespass in order to commit offence punishable with death) of Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) in August 2009 and sentenced to death.
The convict had filed an appeal against the Sessions court order in the High Court, which upheld the death sentence. (Sources: PTI, 15/09/2013)