Noida: A fast-track court on Saturday sentenced a Dadri man to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and fined him Rs 12,000 for snatching a car 11 years ago. The court ordered the accused to pay Rs 10,000 out of the total amount to the owner of the car as compensation.The case is linked to an FIR registered with the Phase-II police by N Raja Singh on April 5, 2013. He claimed that when he was returning from his office in Delhi to his home in Noida, he had stopped his Hyundai i10 car near Sector 110, close to the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, to buy fruits. Pawan Kumar accosted him when he was keeping the fruits in the car and pointed a gun at him. He then asked him to drive a short distance and forced him to get down, he said.Police booked the accused under sections 392 (robbery), 342 (wrongful confinement) 323 (causing voluntary hurt) and 307 (attempt to murder) and arrested Kumar after a probe.During trial, a prosecution witness, constable Gurmeet Singh, confirmed that he intercepted the car near Bulandshahr for a routine check.The defence counsel, however, argued that police neither recorded the statement of the victim’s wife nor did they call the person at whose house he had taken refuge after the robbery. Police also did not trace the mobile phone locations of the victim and the accused, which casts doubt on their case, he said.Additional district and sessions judge Satyendra Singh said that the victim is an eyewitness to the incident and was also injured, so his testimony cannot be disbelieved. “If the police committed any negligence in the investigation, the accused cannot be given the benefit of that negligence,” the court held, citing a Supreme Court judgement (A Pradeepan and others v State of Kerala 2007), wherein it held that an acquittal cannot be granted solely due to an error in the investigation.The incident has been proved by the victim and confirmed by the witnesses present and on the basis of the medical report and the recovery of the vehicle, the judge said.The court held the accused guilty of all charges except Section 307 (attempt to murder), noting that the injury caused to the victim was not aimed at killing him.
