Yog Raj Sharma
The North News
Shimla, September 23
The Himachal Pradesh High Court has commuted the death sentences of two men convicted in the 2014 abduction and killing of four-year-old Yug Gupta to life imprisonment, sparking anger among the victim’s family. The high court overturned a lower court’s ruling that had sentenced three men to death. The High Court upheld life imprisonment for Chandra Sharma and Vikrant Bakshi, while acquitting Tejinder Pal. Yug’s father, Vinod Gupta, said the family was deeply dissatisfied with the judgment and would appeal to the Supreme Court, insisting that only the death penalty would deliver justice. “Eleven years have passed, yet Yug has not received justice. The killers are still alive,” he said. Yug was kidnapped on 14 June 2014 from Ram Bazaar in Shimla. His abductors had demanded ₹3.5 crore in ransom. In August 2016, his skeletal remains were recovered from a water tank in Bharari, where he had been thrown alive with stones tied to his body. The state CID filed charges in October 2016, and a trial began in February 2017. In September 2018, a Shimla sessions court sentenced Sharma, Pal and Bakshi to death, calling the crime among the “rarest of rare.”
