Gurgaon: A Gurgaon court on Tuesday awarded life imprisonment to a man who, in 2018, helped his employer murder an acquaintance in DLF Phase-2 and dispose of the body parts. Public prosecutor Sumit Saini said the prime accused, Harnek Singh Dhillon, who was 80 at the time, took Rs 60 lakh from his acquaintance, Jas Karan (52), on the pretext of getting him permanent residency of Canada. When Karan started asking for his money back, Dhillon planned his murder and enlisted his servant, Jagdish (now in his 30s), to help him. On Oct 14, 2018, Karan came to Dhillon’s house. There, Dhillon and Jagdish killed him with a hammer and dismembered his body with a khukri. The duo stuffed the parts into plastic bags and loaded then onto Dhillon’s vehicle with his wife’s help. The two drove nearly 350km to Ludhiana and got rid of the body parts, clothes, the murder weapon and the keys to Karan’s two-wheeler at various spots. A few days after killing Karan, Dhillon allegedly murdered his wife as she kept insisting that they go to the police and confess to the crime. Dhillon died in Dec 2023, when both trials were still ongoing. Forensic evidence, CCTV footage in which Karan was seen entering Dhillon’s house, footage from a toll plaza, a DNA report establishing the identity of the deceased, and the statement of a neighbour proved crucial in the conviction.Neighbour Wakil testified that he saw Dhillon take Karan into his house and, five minutes later, heard screaming. When he rushed over to inquire what had happened, Dhillon opened the door and told him that a monkey had got in and bit him. Saini submitted that the evidence showed financial dealings and disputes between Dhillon and the deceased. Terming the crime “heinous and brutal”, additional sessions judge Puneet Sehgal said, “The conduct of Jagdish shows that he tried to destroy the evidence by cutting the body into pieces and dumping the same at multiple locations.”The court denied any leniency and observed that awarding a lesser sentence would “encourage any criminal” and “society would suffer” as a result. “Undue sympathy by means of imposing an inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system and undermine public confidence in the efficacy of law,” the judge said, and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Jagdish along with the life sentence.
