INDIA. DEATH SENTENCE FOR ACCUSED IN MULTIPLE CAB DRIVER MURDERS

May 14, 2008: in India, Additional Sessions Judge Balbir Singh awarded the death sentence to a man accused of abducting and murdering 24 cab drivers between 2002 and 2004.
He and his accomplices would allegedly pose as passengers, hire cabs, kill the drivers, and sell the cabs in illegal auto markets in Uttar Pradesh. The death sentence is for just one case. The court found in Gurgaon in January 2002, Devender Kumar Sharma abducted and murdered driver Naresh Kumar in the jungles of Aligarh. Naresh's body was never recovered.
Sharma practiced as an Ayurvedic doctor in Pureni, Aligarh, police said. Two of his accomplices, Fatah Chand and Kishan, are on the run and have been declared offenders. On March 12, 2007, a Sessions court in Faridabad awarded a life sentence to Sharma for killing a driver from Palwal in 2002. In most cases the bodies were not recovered, and the serial killings surfaced in 2004 when the accused was caught red-handed killing a driver in Aligarh. (Sources: Reuters, 14/05/2008)