Sourav Chowdhury murder: Kolkata court awards death penalty to 8 accused

A Kolkata court has awarded the death penalty to the eight accused in the brutal 2014 murder of student Sourav Chowdhury. The death of the 21-year-old student, of Bamangachhi of North 24 Parganas, rocked Kolkata in July 2014. 

The student had organised a protest against illicit hooch dens run by a local miscreant in the area. He was abducted on 5 July, 2014. A state-wide furore followed after Sourav's hacked up body was found on the railway tracks in between Bamangachhi and Duttapukur stations.

In September 2014, the police arrested 14 accused and chargesheeted them with the depositions of 41 witnesses.

Shayamal Karmakar, Amal Barui, Ratan Samaddar,Tarak Das, Suman Sarkar, Suman Das, Somnath sardar and Tapas Biswas were awarded the death sentence on 19 April, 2016.

The other accused Rakesh Barman, Poly Maity, Ratan Das and Sishir Mukhopadhay were awarded five years imprisonment.

All the 12 accused had been convicted by the Barasat court last week. Earlier, the victim's family and friends had taken out a rally in the court's premises demanding death penalty for all the convicts.

--ANI