Ram Nayak Pandey (extreme left), RB Saroj (centre) and Ram Karan Singh Yadav outside the court on Friday. Picture by Naeem Ansari

Lucknow, April 5: Two retired policemen and a serving cop were today sentenced to death for murdering a DSP over a department feud, killing 12 villagers and branding them dacoits to pass off the 1982 plot as an encounter.

Five other cops were handed life terms over the carnage in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district, described in police records as one of the most vicious plots ever by juniors to eliminate a senior and claiming that he had died in the line of duty fighting the “bandits”.

One of the convicted policemen was being probed for lapses by the slain DSP, K.P. Singh, whose widow moved the Supreme Court and won an order for a CBI inquiry after a magisterial probe gave the cops a clean chit.

After a CBI court announced the sentences this afternoon in Lucknow, Jhabra Devi, who lost her young son in the incident, sighed deeply. “I will now die with some solace. My son’s killers have been punished,” the 70-year-old said.

Judge Rajendra Singh gave the capital punishment to R.B. Saroj, the officer who was being probed by the DSP, head constable Ram Nayak Pandey and constable Ram Karan Singh Yadav.

The three were part of the conspiracy to kill the DSP and the 12 villagers, the judge said. Only Pandey is in service now, as a sub-inspector. The rest have retired.

Nasim Ahmad, Ramakant Dixit, Mangla Singh, Pervez Hussain and Rajendra Prasad Singh were awarded life terms for facilitating the murders. One policeman, Prem Singh, was acquitted for want of evidence.

In addition to the eight sentenced today, the CBI had chargesheeted 11 other policemen who were in the team blamed for the bloodletting but they died during the three decades of probe and trial.

“It was a night of horror,” recalled Ram Manohar Shukla, 62, a retired army jawan and resident of Madhopur village where the murders took place on the night of March 12, 1982.

The team of 20 cops raided the hamlet, around 240km from Lucknow, on the pretext of looking for dacoits around midnight, searching houses, dragging youths out of homes and shooting some of them in cold blood.

Singh was found murdered later that night. Officer Saroj and others claimed before the media next day that the DSP was shot by “dacoits” in the encounter that also led to the deaths of 12 “bandits” and their accomplices” in the village.

Jhabra, who lost 20-year-old son Jagran, recalled the nightmare. “All I could see when I stepped out of home later that night were bodies. We women were asked to stay inside the house,” she said in Madhopur this evening.

But Shukla, the retired army jawan, had a close shave. “I was taken out of my house but I pleaded that I was an army jawan. I showed them my papers and was allowed to go,” Shukla said.