A Delhi court on Monday awarded life imprisonment to Romesh Sharma, alleged frontman of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, and five others for murdering his fashion designer girlfriend Kunjum Budhiraja nine years ago.Additional Sessions Judge S P Garg, pronouncing the sentence, also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Sharma and Rs 5,000 each on his newphew Surinder Mishra and a woman convict Tejinder Virdi alias Dolly. Other convicts - Hemchand, Santram and Ramesh - were fined Rs 1,000 each.The court had on February 15 held all of them guilty under Section 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.It had acquitted Jaspreet Virdi alias Sonu for want of evidence.Earlier, arguing on the quantum of sentence, special public prosecutor S K Saxena sought death penalty for the convicts saying that abettors were as much liable as the actual offenders."The gravity of the offence is also to be looked into while awarding the sentence," he said, while citing various Supreme Court judgements.The defence counsel, opposing his contention, said that the case did not fall under the category of the rarest of the rare cases and further there were no special reasons for awarding capital punishment.Sharma, who allegedly had an affair with Budhiraja, had conspired with others to eliminate her as she had started usurping his assets, according to the prosecution.His nephew Surinder had taken the victim to his Jai Mata Di farmhouse in South Delhi on the pretext of offering puja where she was stabbed to death on March 20, 1999 by a group of hired gangsters.
