Bongaigaon, May 8: Thirty-two persons were today sentenced to life imprisonment in a 1998 murder case by a Barpeta court in lower Assam.

The sentence was handed out by Chandan Das, additional district and sessions judge of fast track court, Barpeta, around 1pm after hearing 18 witnesses in the case. The accused have been sent to Barpeta district jail.

On October 1, 1998, accused Samsul Haque, Rahimuddin Hazi and 30 others had murdered Abdul Wahab at Dharmapur village under Baghbar police station in Barpeta district over a land dispute. Wahab was a resident and the president of Kadamtola gram panchayat in the Dharmapur Sor area.

Around 6.30 that morning, Haque, Hazi and their men had reached Dharmapur Sor along the Brahmaputra where Wahab, 55, was building a hut on a riverine plot, 3km from his residence, and attacked him with spears and machetes.

A wounded Wahab ran towards his relative's house but the accused caught him, stabbed him further and dragged him on a boat with the intention of hacking his body into pieces and throwing into the river. But Wahab unexpectedly slipped from the boat and drowned. After three days, his body was found on the river bank, not very far from the murder spot.

The accused came from Rangapani Sor, 1km from the murder spot.

Wahab's family had lodged an FIR at Baghbar police station on the day of the murder, on the basis of which the police registered a case (No. 155/1998) under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon), 149 (if an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly, every other member of such assembly shall be guilty of the offence, 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code.

In 2008, the case (No. 8/2008) reached the fast-track court of the additional district and sessions judge, Barpeta.

According to Wahab's family, he was murdered over a land dispute. They said the accused had claimed that a plot of land occupied by Wahab was theirs.

Additional public prosecutor, Barpeta court, Mafizuddin Ahmed, said, "Around 25 men from Wahab's family came to the court today and left soon after the judgement was announced, fearing a backlash from those convicted and their family members who remained on the court premises till the end."

Attempts to contact Wahab's family members proved futile as their mobile phones were switched off.