Friday, January 29, 2010

Haldiram\'s owner gets lifer for murder

A Kolkata fast track court convicted Prabhu Shankar Agarwal, owner of Haldiram confectionary chain, and four others life imprisonment for conspiring to murder a vendor about five years ago.

According to the sentence announced on Friday by the fourth city sessions judge Tapan Sen, they have been punished for conspiring to murder Satyanarayan Thakur on March 30, 2005.

The other four are contract killers Gopal Tiwari, Agarwal's manager and linkman between Agarwal and Tiwari, Arun Khandelwal, and Tiwari's henchmen Raja Sonkar and Manoj Thakur.

Criminal conspiracy and an attempt to murder under sections 120B and 307 of the Indian Penal Code were slapped on Agarwal and the contract killers he appointed. They carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Earlier on Friday, Agarwal pleaded for mercy citing employee interest. He employs 1,000 people, who will suffer, argued his lawyer.

Friday was the last working day for Tapan Sen. Agarwal can appeal against this sentence to a higher court.

Agarwal had hired Gopal Tiwari to finish off Thakur who refused to shift his tea stall from the ground floor of a multi-storeyed building, which Agarwal had bought in 2000.

Agarwal succeeded in evicting all the tenants from the groundfloor of the building except Thakur who had a 170-square foot tea stall. Thakur obtained a stay from the High Court after a city civil court directed him to vacate the premises in 2004.

When, in the last week of March 2005, Thakur refused the Rs 4 lakh offer Agarwal made to him, Tiwari was hired to eliminate the obstinate Thakur.

But the bullets that Tiwari and his accomplices fired at 5 in the morning of 30th of March 2005 hits Thakur's 18-year old nephew Pramod Sharma in the leg.

The judge had pronounced Agarwal, Tiwari and three other accomplices guilty of conspiracy to murder on Wednesday. They were taken to Alipore Central Jail from the court itself.

The Haldiram journey began in 1937 from Bikaner in Rajasthan. It has now spread all over the country and has even found market overseas.

Prabhu Shankar Agarwal's father Rameswarlal came to Kolkata in the mid-fifties and opened his first shop in Burrabazaar in 1958.

The company claims to have exceeded a turnover of $4 million.
News From: http://www.Time2timeNews.com

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