Mumbai, May 24: A court here on Friday sentenced Parvez Tak to death in the 2011 murder of his stepdaughter and actor Laila Khan, her mother and four siblings, stating that the act of the accused was “not only barbaric, but also inhuman of the highest degree”.
It said the offence has certainly shocked the collective conscience of the society and therefore falls under the “rarest of rare” category, the court ruled.
Additional sessions judge Sachin Pawar had on May 9 found Tak guilty of the murder and destruction of evidence, among other offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the quantum of his sentence was decided on Friday.
Laila Khan, her mother Shelina Patel and her four siblings were killed at their bungalow at Igatpuri in Nashik district of Maharashtra in February 2011.
Tak was living with Shelina Patel as a family member and as per the order it was not established if he was married to her.
The killings came to light a few months later when the Jammu and Kashmir police arrested Tak. The decomposed bodies of the victims were recovered from the bungalow later.
“All the six deceased persons are victims of savage attack by the accused. The murders are committed in an extremely grotesque and revolting manner. The five women victims were vulnerable and the accused took its disadvantage,” the court observed.
It stated that the execution of the act indicates that these were “cold-blooded murders”.
The accused committed the crime “cold-heartedly” and “meticulously planned screening of evidence”, which remained unnoticed for almost 17 months after the commission of the offence, the court noted.
The act of the accused making disclosures in police custody, after realising that he cannot escape from clutches of law can not be accepted as remorse or repentance, the order said.
The judge, in his 250-page judgment copy, stated the act of the accused without “justification or provocation” has led to the elimination of the entire family of the deceased Shelina Patel.
