Cuttack, May 2: Orissa High Court today admitted gangster Sheikh Hyder’s appeal against the order of his conviction and life sentence in the Sheikh Chuna murder case on March 16.

Sheikh Chuna (40) alias Malik Hanan, brother of gangster Sheikh Suleiman, was gunned down near Stewart School in Bhubaneswar on May 31, 2005.

After killing Chuna, the criminals had sped away in a four-wheeler. Hyder and others, who were involved in the murder, were later arrested from Nagpur.

The court of additional sessions judge, Bhubaneswar, had awarded life sentence to Hyder and seven others involved in the crime. They were also asked to pay a fine of Rs 50,000 or go through two more years’ additional imprisonment.

The two-judge bench of Justice P.K. Mohanty and Justice B.K. Nayak admitted the appeal which was moved today through his counsel. “The thrust of the appeal was that the conviction is not maintainable as the trial court had failed to follow settled principles of corroboration of prosecution case by independent witnesses,” Hyder’s counsel Dharanidhar Nayak told The Telegraph.

Hyder said in his appeal: “No independent witness had been properly examined and almost all witnesses of the prosecution had been declared hostile.”

While awarding life sentence, the trial court had, in its verdict, observed: “The convicts caused a barbaric and ghastly murder of a middle-aged person in a posh locality and in the sight of a number of people which created havoc and terror in the locality. Hence, the accused did not deserve any sympathy.”