Death penalty to man who killed and drowned nine people in well

Warangal:  Warangal’s First Additional Sessions Court on Wednesday awarded death sentence to Sanjay Kumar Yadav, who was accused of killing nine persons of a family and dumping their bodies in a well. The court completed the trial within 36 days after receiving the 475-page charge sheet filed by the Warangal police.
The accused can, however, approach the High Court to challenge the death penalty.
The Warangal police arrested the 24-year-old Yadav on May 25; four days after the nine bodies were recovered from the well. First, four bodies of a migrant worker family from West Bengal were found in an agricultural well on May 21 at Gorrekunta village in Geesugonda Mandal of Warangal (Rural). At the time, police suspected that the family killed themselves over financial distress brought about by the lockdown.
The police sought assistance from a forensic team, deployed sniffer dogs and began an investigation. On the second day, five more bodies emerged from the well. The suspicion of mass murder was confirmed when scratch marks were found on the bodies by the forensics team, indicating that the bodies were dragged to the well. Six special teams were formed to crack the case.
The recovered bodies were later identified as 48-year-old Maqsood, his wife Nisha, their two sons and one daughter and others associated with him and were employed at the gunny bag manufacturing factory where they worked and lived.  Investigations and CCTV footage led police to Sanjay who is said to have confessed to killing nine people, six of whom were from a single-family. Sanjay, a native of Bihar had been working at Warangal for the past six years and was in a relationship with a 37-year-old Rafiqa, a niece of Nisha. On March 6, the couple was en route to West Bengal to meet Rafiqa’s family for talks about marriage. The police said that Sanjay gave her buttermilk laced with sleeping pills, strangulated her and threw her out of the train.