Haldiram owner P S Agarwal gets life sentenced im attempted murder conspiracy
30 Jan 2010
A Kolkata city sessions court,yesterday sentenced Prabhu Shankar Agarwal, owner of Haldiram confectionary chain, and four others to life imprisonment for conspiring and attempting to murder a tea vendor on 30 March, 2005.
Agarwal and the contract killers he appointed, Gopal Tiwari, Agarwal's manager and linkman between Agarwal and Tiwari, Arun Khandelwal, and Tiwari's henchmen Raja Sonkar and Manoj Thakur were charged under for criminal conspiracy and attempt to murder under sections 120B and 307 of the Indian Penal Code.
The judge applied the maximum provision of life imprisonment under the two sections.
The convicted conspirators were returned to Alipore jail where they have been lodged since Wednesday.
After the court pronounced of the sentence, the convicts instructed their lawyers, to appeal to Calcutta High Court for bail.
Earlier, Agarwal pleading for mercy cited employees' interest. He said that he had 1,000 employees and a big business, which would suffer with is imprisonment. He asked to be given minimum punishment.