Hyderabad: A court in Telangana’s Warangal district Wednesday sentenced a man to death for killing nine migrant workers by throwing them into a well after mixing sedatives in their food. The court verdict came five months after the shocking incident. First Additional District Court Magistrate found 24-year-old Sanjay Kumar Yadav guilty of the gruesome killings. The court then sentenced him to death.
Police investigations had revealed that to hide the murder of a woman with whom the Bihar man, had a live-in relationship, Yadav committed nine more murders. He threw the victims into a well at Gorrekunta village near Warangal town May 20. Police on May 25 arrested Yadav, who confessed to killing the nine people, including six members of one family. He said he had mixed sleeping pills in their food and then thrown them one by one into a nearby well. As
Another migrant from Tripura, who was also present in the building, was also murdered. Police had recovered the bodies Mohammed Maqsood Alam (55), his wife Nisha (48), their sons Shabaaz Alam (20) and Sohail Alam (18), daughter Bushra Khatoon (22), Bushra’s three-year-old son, all from West Bengal, Sriram Kumar Shah (26), Shyam Kumar Shah (21), both from Bihar and Mohammed Shakeel (40), a native of Tripura.
Yadav, who was also working at the gunny bag unit, developed a relationship with Nisha’s niece Rafiqa (37), who had come from West Bengal with three children after separation from her husband and was employed in the same factory. Yadav had taken a room on rent and was living with her. After Rafiqa admonished him for trying to sexually exploit her daughter, he hatched a plan to kill Rafiqa.
Yadav informed Maqsood’s family that he is taking her to West Bengal to talk to her elders for marriage. They boarded the Garib Rath train to Visakhapatnam March 6, but during the journey, he bought butter milk and after mixing sleeping pills, served it to Rafiqa. After she fell asleep, he strangulated her and threw the body from the train near Nidadavole in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
The accused got down from the train at Rajahmundry and returned to Warangal. When Nisha and her husband enquired about Rafiqa, he said she had reached her village and would come back later. When Maqsood’s family threatened to approach the police, he hatched a plan to eliminate all of them.
When Maqsood’s family was celebrating Shabaaz’s birthday May 20, Yadav came to their house and mixed sleeping pills in the food prepared at home. As two Bihari youth living in the same building had seen him at Maqsood’s house, he went to their room and mixed sedatives in their food to wipe out the evidence. Shakeel, a native of Tripura who had come to Maqsood’s house at the latter’s invitation, too became Yadav’s victim.