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Mumbai court convicts watchman Sajjad Mogal for Pallavi Purkayastha's murder

Written by : TNM

The News Minute| June 30, 2014| 05:55 pm ISTMumbai: A Mumbai court Monday found a security watchman guilty of molestation, criminal trespass and murder of lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in Mumbai two years ago.The accused, Sajjad A. Mogal, 23, was working at Himalayan Heights skyscraper in Wadala in south Mumbai where the lawyer lived at the time of the attack Aug 9, 2012.Purkayastha was killed after she fought off Mogal's advances in her home and complained to her fiance Avik Sengupta.The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment to the convict here Thursday following a request by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.After painstaking investigations, the police filed a 434-page charge sheet against Mogal in October 2012. During the trial, a total of 43 witnesses were examined.Mogal refuted all allegations and his lawyer Wahab Khan contended that the victim's fiance Sengupta had killed her in their flat.Later, in his statement, Mogal confessed that using a duplicate key, he entered Purkayastha's flat and attempted to force himself on her.However, she resisted and started screaming at which he panicked and attacked her with a knife he was carrying, he said in the statement.Shortly after the ruling, the parents of the woman expressed satisfaction with the police investigations and the verdict."Two families have been killed... In the past couple of years, our families (Puryakastha and Senguptas) have undergone lot of trauma... We demand death for him as it will send a positive message to society," they told media persons.Avik Sengupta, the lawyer's fiancee who was one of the witnesses in the case and had deposed in the trial, died of natural causes in November 2013.With IANS

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