Shashi Prasad; Anandsen Yadav being led out of the court in Faizabad on Tuesday. (PTI)

Lucknow, May 17: A former minister of Mayavati was today awarded double life imprisonment over the murder of a young law student who was bumped off after she became pregnant and insisted on marrying him.

The conviction of Anandsen Yadav and two others — including another woman he was two-timing while in a relationship with the victim — comes less than two weeks after another of Mayavati’s MLAs was held guilt of murder.

The Faizabad fast-track court that sentenced Anandsen, his driver Vijaysen and Seema Azad, the other woman accused of plotting the 2007 killing of 24-year-old Shashi Prasad and dumping her body, described it as one of the “most rare brutal murders”. The ex-minister, the court said, should have been Shashi’s protector.

Less than a fortnight back, BSP legislator Shekhar Tiwari was given the life term in connection with the murder of PWD engineer Manoj Gupta, who was given electric shocks and left to die outside a police station in 2008.

BSP spokesperson S.P. Maurya said the cases showed Mayavati kept her promise of “sending offenders to jail, not to the ministry”.

In court today, Anandsen betrayed little emotion when the punishment was read out. He stood quietly with his two accomplices in the witness box through the proceedings and was led out amid tight security after the sentencing.

Shashi’s father Yogendra Prasad, who waged a lone battle to get justice, expressed satisfaction at the outcome but felt “death would have been the right punishment”. “I cannot bear to see the smile still on the face of the former minister (Anandsen). It is hard to live alone without my daughter,” the 65-year-old said, referring to earlier court hearings when the ex-minister was seen grinning as he was brought to the fast-track court.

Prasad thanked ex-chief minister and Samajwadi Party boss Mulayam Singh Yadav for turning the case into a political campaign to bring Anandsen — son of former Samajwadi Party veteran Mitrasen Yadav — to justice.

The case dates back to October 2007, months after Mayavati came to power in the summer of that year. Anandsen, the BSP MLA from Milkipur who was food processing minister, used to visit the Faizabad house of Yogendra Prasad, who was then a BSP worker. There, he met his daughter Shashi, a third-year law student.

Shashi got into a relationship with Anandsen without knowing the minister was already having an affair with Seema. In October 2007, she realised that she had become pregnant and began pressurising the minister to marry her.

She disappeared on October 22, with some witnesses telling police she was last seen with driver Vijaysen, who is also a relative of Anandsen. Vijaysen was arrested sometime later and confessed that Shashi was kidnapped and strangulated by Bullan Yadav, a criminal from Sultanpur hired by the former minister.