Rajkot: A sessions court here on Tuesday sentenced a 25-year-old man to life imprisonment for fatally stabbing a man who tried to mediate in a minor dispute over a parked motorcycle in the Kittipara Awas Yojana area in June 2022.The killing occurred in the early hours of June 20, 2022. According to the prosecution, Zakiri Juneja and his friend Sunil were having tea near Sunil’s shop around 4am when Vicky Chovasiya arrived and began kicking Zakiri’s parked Access scooter and verbally abusing them. When Zakiri asked him to stop, the situation escalated. Hoping to defuse the matter, Zakiri called his cousin Asif Juneja, who was familiar with the accused, to reason with him. When Asif arrived and tried to calm Chovasiya, the accused got further enraged. Chovasiya pulled out a knife from his trousers and stabbed Asif on the left side of the chest. Asif began bleeding profusely. Zakiri and Sunil tried to catch Chovasiya, but he managed to escape, dropping his mobile phone during the scuffle. Asif was rushed to the civil hospital in an autorickshaw, where doctors declared him dead on arrival. On April 30, 2026, additional sessions judge V K Bhatt delivered the judgment. “Relying heavily on eyewitness testimonies, forensic reports and the recovery of the murder weapon, the court concluded that the prosecution had proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Forensic reports notably confirmed the presence of the victim’s blood on both the recovered knife and the clothes worn by the accused at the time of the crime,” additional public prosecutor P N Shah said. The court convicted Chovasiya under Section 302 (murder) and Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code. He was sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment and fined Rs 500 for murder, along with three months of simple imprisonment for causing hurt. The accused was acquitted of charges under Section 504 of the IPC and Section 135(1) of the GP Act.
