This story is from May 25, 2021

Noose for 12 AP robbers for ’08 highway murders

Noose for 12 AP robbers for ’08 highway murders
Vijayawada: In a rare instance of capital punishment being handed to as many people at once, a sessions court in Andhra Pradesh’s Ongole on Monday sentenced to death 12 men — gangster Md Abdul Samad, alias Munna Bhai, and 11 of his accomplices — in three cases of dacoity leading to the murder of six people on the Chennai-Kolkata highway in 2008. Four other convicted members of the gang got prison terms of 10 years each while two were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.
Overall, 11 murder cases had been filed against the gang, four of which were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Three other murder-for-gain cases are still in different stages of trial. The gang was also found guilty of illegally possessing a 9mm machine gun.
Munna Bhai, who hails from Kanigiri village in Prakasam district, and his associates Sk Riyas, Syed Hidayuthulla, Md Jamaluddin, Batala Salamon, Y Chinna Veeraswamy, G Bhanu Prakash, Rachamala Sampath, G Sreedhar, Sk Hafeez, Gangadhar Rao, Sk Kamal Saheb, Sk Rahamuthulla, Sk Dada Peer, Sk Irfan, and Sk Rafi were charged under various sections of the IPC and the Indian Arms Act.
VIII additional district and sessions court judge G Manohar Reddy had upheld the submission of public prosecutor S Sivaramakrishna Prasad and convicted the accused on May 18. The quantum of punishment was pronounced on Monday.
The trial started in 2008, after the gang members were arrested and charged for the murders over a period of several months. All the victims — Ramar Shekar and Perumal Subramanium from Tamil Nadu, G Syambabu and G Vinod Kumar from Andhra Pradesh, and Bhushan Yadav and Chandan Kumar Mahato from Bihar — were truck drivers and cleaners. They were stopped, robbed and killed by the gang, whose members used to dress as policemen. The trucks and loads would be later sold to scrap merchants.

The murders came to light in October 2008, when a driver and cleaner went missing along with a lorry laden with iron rods en route to Kalpakam in Tamil Nadu from Durgapur in Bengal. Lorry owner Veerappan Kuppuswamy lodged a complaint at Ongole police station.
The police suspected the involvement of Abdul Samad and his gang and launched a manhunt. The other cases came to light after Samad was arrested from Karnataka and interrogated. His gang members were apprehended from different parts of the state.
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