Guwahati, Aug. 27: Six years after social worker Sanjoy Ghose was abducted and murdered by the banned Ulfa, a trial court today pronounced life imprisonment for two residents of Majuli for their complicity in the crime.

Ghose had been abducted along with an associate in the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development in the Northeast, Chandan Doley, while working on a novel anti-erosion project in the river isle of Majuli. Doley returned unhurt, but his distinguished colleague was never traced.

After recording the statements of 31 prosecution and defence witnesses during a trial spanning eight months, additional ad hoc sessions judge P.K. Phukan held Kania Hazarika, a Majuli-based farmer, and Moni Neog, a contractor, guilty of conspiring with the abductors with an intent to murder.

Apart from sentencing the duo to life imprisonment, the court fixed a fine of Rs 2,000 each and an extended sentence of six months in the event of default. Quoting from a Supreme Court judgment, Phukan said kidnapping was an act infringing on human rights and the right to life, as enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution.

The victim’s father, Sekhar Ghose, told The Telegraph over phone from New Delhi today that he hoped the verdict would be a deterrent against similar acts of violence. Hazarika and Neog said after emerging from the courtroom that they would appeal to Gauhati High Court for a review of the judgment.

Ghose, who was the general secretary of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development, was taken hostage on July 4, 1997. However, the trial did not begin until December 16 last year, five years after the abduction and murder case made headlines worldwide.

The social worker’s wife Sumita was the first to testify in court. In her deposition, she said her husband had received threats from the Ulfa prior to his abduction because the organisation he represented “exposed the nexus between officials, contractors and the Ulfa” in Majuli through write-ups in a newsletter, Deepalok, and newspapers.

A special investigation team of the CBI filed chargesheets against 11 persons, including Ulfa commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, in 1999. The chargesheets were filed under Section 120(B), read with Sections 364 and 365, of the IPC.

Three accused — Babu Saikia, Siraj Bora and Arup Baruah — were killed in encounters with security forces after the chargesheets were filed. Barua and his co-accused, barring Hazarika and Neog, were declared absconders by the court.

The CBI had interrogated nearly 250 people and surmised that Ghose was shot dead the very night of his abduction. However, the Ulfa claimed Ghose fell into a gorge in Arunachal Pradesh while being shifted from one camp to another.

The militant group had set conditions for Ghose’s release: that the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development should close its offices in Assam and issue a public apology. It additionally demanded suspension of military operations.

Sumita told the court that she agreed to the first two conditions, but did not make any commitment on the third “as it was not in my hands”.

Another witness, BBC’s eastern India correspondent Subir Bhaumik, said he arranged a telephone conversation between the Ulfa chief and Ghose’s wife at his house in the Jadavpur area of south Calcutta. He disclosed that Ghose’s father and another relative, Samaraditya Pal, had requested him to do so.