12 OF GANG GET DEATH PENALTY FOR KILLING 13

HYDERABAD : A local court in Ongole in Andhra Pradesh on Monday sentenced 12 members of a gang to death and seven others to life imprisonment for killing 13 truck drivers and cleaners on Chennai-Kolkata highway in 2008.

District eighth additional sessions court judge G Manohar Reddy, who heard arguments over the prosecution’s charge sheet in seven different cases, pronounced the judgement in four cases. The judge also sentenced seven others of the gang to life imprisonment.

The Andhra Pradesh high court will have to affirm the death sentence.

Mohammad Abdul Samad alias Munna and his gang committed these crimes in 2008. According to Prakasam district police, Munna used to masquerade as a commercial tax officer and stop trucks coming with heavy loads of goods on the Chennai-Kolkata national highway (NH-16), in the name of checking their documents. “... he would strangulate them driver and cleaner with the help of his accomplices and divert the truck to an unknown place...Later, he would dismantle the trucks into scrap and sell them along with the goods over a period of time,” a police official said. He was arrested in 2009. In a span of a few months in 2008, Munna and his gang killed 13 people.