Mumbai, May 2 (PTI): Gangster Chhota Rajan and eight others were on Wednesday sentenced to life in jail by a special court for killing senior journalist Jyotirmoy Dey in 2011.

Earlier in the day, judge Sameer Adkar had acquitted former journalist Jigna Vora, who was charged with instigating Rajan to carry out the killing.

The judge had also acquitted Paulson Joseph, who was accused of handling the financial operations concerned with the conspiracy. Vora broke down in the court soon after her acquittal was announced by the judge.

Rajan, who witnessed proceedings from New Delhi's Tihar jail via video conferencing, said “theek hai” (all right), when the judge read out the sentence and asked the gangster if he wanted to say anything.

The others convicted and sentenced are Satish Kaliya, Anil Waghmode, Abhijit Shinde, Nilesh Shendge, Arun Dake, Mangesh Agawane, Sachin Gaikwad and Deepak Sisodia.

This is the first major conviction for Rajan since he was deported to India following his arrest at Bali airport in Indonesia in 2015 based on a Red Corner Notice issued by Interpol.

Earlier last year, Rajan was convicted by a court in Delhi and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a case of fake passports.

The prosecution had demanded the maximum punishment for the convicts, saying that J. Dey was a journalist who represented the fourth pillar of democracy.

Dey, 56, was shot by two men on a motorcycle on June 11, 2011, in suburban Powai when he was on his way home.

At that time, he worked as a senior editor for the tabloid, Mid Day.

According to the prosecution, the killing was carried out at the behest of Rajan, who was purportedly 'unhappy' with the negative reports that Dey had been writing on his health and his diminishing clout in the underworld.

A total of 12 persons were arrested in the case, including Rajan, Satish Joseph alias Satish Kaliya, the shooter, and Vora.

One of the accused, Vinod Asrani, died after prolonged illness in 2015, pending trial.

According to the prosecution, Vora, who was out on bail during the pendency of the trial, had been in constant touch with Rajan before the incident.

The CBI, in its charge sheet, had claimed that Vora complained to Rajan about Dey, and instigated him to execute the conspiracy to kill him.

Defence advocates had urged the court to show leniency towards the convicts on several grounds such as their age, that some of them had young children, or ailing parents to take care of.

They had also argued that the present case could not fall into the category of the 'rarest of rare' - an essential factor to warrant the death penalty under the IPC section 302.

The prosecutor, Pradeep Gharat, however, had argued that rarest of rare or not, the fact remained that the nine persons had been convicted under section 302 and faced either the death penalty or imprisonment for life.