The Bombay High Court has upheld the life sentence awarded by the lower court to a 26-year-old man who murdered his friend following a row over a wristwatch.
Trial court had convicted Imtiyaz Shoukat Sayed of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code in September 2003.
According to the prosecution, on March 19, 2000, Sayed had a row with his friend Imtiyaz Javed. Javed had borrowed a wristwatch from him, and had refused to return it.
Sayed slapped him, and there was a fight. Then Javed handed him the watch and started walking away.
However, Sayed called him back, and stabbed him with a knife.
Advocate Prakash Wagh, Sayed’s lawyer, argued in the High Court that his client could not have been convicted for murder as he had no intention to cause the death. At the most he could have been charged for ‘culpable homicide’, a lesser offence, as he had assaulted his friend in a fit of rage.
But the division bench of Justices P V Hardas and A S Gadkari noted that “the stab wound was not delivered by the appellant in the heat of the moment during the fight”.
“The deceased had returned the watch and was walking away when the accused called him and intentionally stabbed him. The ferocity and the force of the blow was such that practically all the vital organs had been damaged,” the bench said, upholding the trial court’s verdict.
