Mumbai, Sep 17 (Inditop.com) The Bombay High Court Thursday acquitted the alleged serial killer known as “Beer Man” for want of evidence against him, his lawyer said.
The ruling came in an appeal filed by Ravindra Kantrole, 36, challenging the life imprisonment sentence to him by a fast track court in Sewri in January, advocate S. Kunjuraman said.
“Among other things, the high court ruled that the forensic tests conducted on Kantrole were not admissible and the testimony of a witness who had seen him for barely a few seconds and rememebered his face after two months was also inadmissible,” Kunjuraman said.
The verdict releasing Kantrole was passed by a division bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A. R. Joshi.
Kantrole was arrested in February 2007 for the alleged serial killings of seven men in south Mumbai between October 2006 and January 2007. The killer allegedly targeted slum-dwellers and pavement dwellers, killing them with broken bottles of beer and dumping their bodies on the shores of the Arabian Sea.
The prosecution had sought a death sentence against the accused but the court declined the plea on the grounds that this not “the rarest of rare cases” and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Shortly after the verdict of the lower court, Kunjuraman challenged it in the Bombay High Court which found him not guilty Thursday.
Kunjuraman said that contrary to allegations that the accused was insane, Kantrole is very much in control of his senses and had been wrongly picked up in the case.
Kantrole lived outside a Muslim mausoleum at New Marine Lines in south Mumbai when the murders took place.
