Chandigarh August 2:
Three Punjabi youths Pradeep Kumar, Kashmiri Lal and Tarlochan Singh, facing death sentence in Sharjah, UAE, for killing their fellow worker Bikramjit Singh in 2008, now have the charge against them dropped.
The Appeal Sharia Court accepted the compromise reached between the family of the victim and the convicts and waived the death sentence. Now, they are no more convicts on the death row but prisoners undergoing sentence for other minor offences.
The case will come up for hearing under civil law on August 23 where sentences for the remaining offences committed by them would be adjudicated. Since they have been in prison since 2008, there are chances of their being let off either on the first hearing or a few hearings later.
Pradeep of Fatehgarhniara village in Hoshiarpur, Kashmiri of Bharsighpura in Nawanshahr and Tarlochan of Sakroli village in Hoshiarpur owe their acquittal from murder charges to a Dubai-based businessman and president of the Punjabi Society of Dubai, S P Singh Oberoi.
Oberoi made a number of visits to India after the Appeal Sharia Court on January 6 this year gave the convicts time to go for a compromise or diya - blood money - with the family of the victim. Pradeep, Kashmiri and Tarlochan had murdered 22-year-old Bikramjit Singh of Dayalbagh in Gurdaspur in 2008. It was a case of bootlegging that led to murder.
“Families of all the three convicts are living in pathetic conditions. They are in heavy debt and have little or no sources of income. They barely manage to sustain themselves. The financial condition of the family of Bikramjit Singh is no better either,” SP Singh Oberoi told reporters after the court had accepted the compromise papers.
Oberoi frequented the families of all three convicts as well as the family of Bikramjit Singh to make the compromise possible. “It required a lot of paper work, including attestation, both from Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India and the Embassy of UAE in India, before the compromise deed was accepted by the court.
“The financial condition of the families of the convicts is so bad that they could not think of contributing even half of the agreed amount of blood money. But I am happy, it has been done and now these three boys will be able to come back home soon and rejoin their families,” added Oberoi.
Oberoi says that besides Anshul Sharma of the Indian Consulate in Dubai, Harvinder Singh, a Sarpanch from Hoshiarpur, Dr Sherry Kahlon of Batala, Gurmukh Singh Sohal of Gurdaspur and Sukhdeep Singh Oberoi of Delhi were a great help in arranging for a compromise and necessary papers in time.
Each document has to be translated in Arabic and then attested by the UAE Embassy in New Delhi before it could be produced before the Sharjah Appeal Sharia court, adds Oberoi.