Deepali Kalia-
On 1st July 2002, the Trial Court’s judgment which had acquitted Ramesh Taurani, TIPS co-founder and convicted Abdul Rauf Merchant in the 1997 murder case of Gulshan Kumar, T-series owner, was confirmed by a Division Bench of Justices NR Borkar and Sadhana Jadhav of the Bombay High Court.
“The appellant (Abdul Rauf) should not be entitled to remission if any He has criminal antecedents and continued in similar activities thereafter. In the interest of justice and society at large, the appellant doesn’t deserve any leniency,” Justice Sadhana Jadhav stated.
“It is a matter of record that the appellant (Rauf) absconded soon after the incident in 1997 and could be arrested only in 2001. He was subsequently enlarged on furlough in 2009 and re-arrested in 2016,” Justice Jadhav added.
The Bench, however, sentenced Abdul Rauf Merchant’s brother, Abdul Rashid Dawood Merchant to life imprisonment setting aside the Trial Court’s order that had acquitted him.
Hence, the ‘Merchant Brothers’ were found guilty of murder under section 302, common intention under section 34 and also conspiracy under section 120B of the Indian Penal Code. In addition, they were also convicted under section 27 of the Arms Act.
The Following pronouncement came from the Bench on an appeal filed by the Maharashtra government against the acquittal of Taurani and Abdul Rashid Dawood Merchant and an appeal by Abdul Rauf Merchant seeking reversal of his conviction and life sentence.
The case involves the murder of Gulshan Kumar on August 12, 1997. Kumar was shot dead while leaving the temple at Jeet Nagar in Juhu, Mumbai. He died on spot from 16 bullets being shot at him by the assailants.
The prosecution had attributed the rivalry between Kumar and Taurani as the reason behind Kumar’s murder. They also claimed that music director Nadeem Saifee due to his differences with Kumar had been the one who had hired gangster Abu Salem to execute the T- series owner.
Saifee, in July of 1997, fled the country and has since never returned.
Following a long trial, out of the 19 accused, only Abdul Rauf Merchant was convicted in 2002. In 2009, Abdul Rauf had applied for a furlough, which was granted to him by the High Court and then he fled to Bangladesh while on furlough but was deported back to India in 2016.
