4 get life for murder, demanding 30L cash & 3kg gold as ransom | Mumbai News

Vasai: The Vasai sessions court on Thursday, sentenced four accused to life imprisonment for murdering a 27-year-old woman in May 2016. A day after the incident, they made a ransom call to the father of the deceased, who works in a jewellery store, and demanded Rs 30 lakh in cash and 3kg gold. They were trapped by the cops when they came to collect the ransom amount.

The deceased, Kavita Badala, was a married woman and a resident of Arnala in Virar West (Vasai taluka).
The convicts are Mohit Kumar Bhagat (33), Ramavtar Sharma (34), Shivkumar Sharma (33) and Yunita Shravanan (43).
The deceased used to work in Ratnam Infotech, which was into multi-level marketing.
On May 15, 2016, the accused called Kavita to a flat in Virar. The same day, Kavita left home informing her family that she was visiting a client in Global City, Virar West. There she met the accused Mohit, who asked her to return the amount he had invested in Ratnam Infotech, which was allegedly done on her assaurance. As she didn’t agree to his demand, she was killed by the four accused in the same flat, where she had visited her client. After the murder, the woman accused, Yunita, carried the laptop bag of the deceased to Andheri railway station and left it there, in a bid to misguide the cops.
Meanwhile, Mohit and Ramavtar, stuffed Kavita’s body in a suitcase and took it to a jungle near Sakhre village in Palghar district and dumped it there, at night, according to prosecution. They returned to the same spot the next day (May 16), and set the body afire, but neither the suitcase nor the body was burnt entirely. This time, the third accused, Shivkumar Sharma, also accompanied them and they went to the spot, triple seat on a bike.
Meanwhile, as Kavita did not return home, the next day (May 16), her father Kishanlal Kothari, registered a missing complaint at Arnala police station. A day after disposing of the body, Mohit made three calls to Kishanlal from Kavita’s phone and demanded a ransom of Rs 30 lakh and 3kg gold. After he approached the cops about this ransom, the cops registered a case of kidnapping and extortion. While the accused came to collect the ransom amount on May 18, they were caught by the Arnala cops and all were booked for murder, kidnapping, extortion and destroying evidence. On Thursday, the Vasai district court sentenced them to life imprisonment and fined them Rs 61,000 to be handed over to the father of the deceased.
Additional public prosecutor said, “This entire trial was based on circumstantial evidence and we had support of 53 witnesses, along with all technical evidence.” He also praised the efforts taken by the investigating officer of this case, API Sandip Shivale. Hearing the final judgment, Kishanlal was in tears and commented, “They should have been hanged.”
Of the 53 witnesses, two are the drivers of the car they had hired when they had taken the suitcase (which had the body) to Palghar. One of the witnesses was the station master of the Andheri railway station where the woman accused had kept the laptop bag of the deceased.