A special court in Nalgonda on Monday awarded capital punishment to the hired killer Subhash Sharma, convicted in the sensational case of the honour killing of Dalit youth at the Miryalaguda town of Telangana on 14 September 2018.

The remaining six accused were given life sentences by the special court judge Roja Ramani. The killers were given a “supari” or contract of Rs one crore by the local real estate tycoon T Maruthi Rao, who later committed suicide in a Hyderabad lodge in 2020.

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Rao, designated as accused number one for conspiring to kill P Pranay, was upset with the marriage of his daughter Amrutha, who had gone against the family and tied the knot with the Dalit youth. The court today also imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 on Sharma and Rs 10,000 each on the remaining convicts.

On that fateful day, Pranay had accompanied his pregnant wife to the hospital, and after they came out, the killers attacked him. In broad daylight, he was hacked on the road with a machete by Subhash Sharma, who hailed from Samastipur in Bihar, right in front of his wife and mother. Pranay’s father-in-law T Maruthi Rao was with the then ruling party TRS. He had confided his angst against his daughter’s marriage to a Dalit youth to Abdul Kareem, a member of the local unit of Congress. Both were involved in illegal land settlements.

Abdul Kareem got in touch with Ashgar Ali and Mohammad Bari, who had been previously arrested in the murder case of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya but were later acquitted. The three then took an advance of Rs15 lakh and hired an out-of-state contract killer Subhash Sharma whom Bari had met at Rajahmundry prison.

The sensational murder had been caught on CCTV, particularly the swag with which Sharma had walked away after killing Pranay. Sharma was later arrested from Samastipur where he had fled after committing the murder. The trial went on for six long years. While Sharma was handed a death sentence, the other convicts, Ashgar Ali, Muhammad Bari, Abdul Kareem, Maruthi Rao’s brother Shravan, Auto driver Nizam, and Maruthi Rao’s car driver Shiva, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Special public prosecutor Darshana Narasimha said the death sentence was awarded considering the gravity of the crime.

Meanwhile, four months after the murder, Amrutha gave birth to a son. Today, after the conviction and sentence of the accused men, Pranay’s family visited his grave and paid their tributes.