Justice R.N. Kali: Convinced. Picture by Amit Datta

“I looked at him. He betrayed no emotion. I was taken aback! I had seen many criminals break down while I read out the sentence — life imprisonment or otherwise. But he was different! He was not at all repentant when I pronounced the death sentence.”

Former Alipore sessions judge Rabindra Nath Kali, who had sentenced Dhananjoy Chatterjee to death, told Metro: “In my 33 years of service, I had pronounced only two death sentences. The other was in the Tulu Dutta murder case. I was convinced that Dhananjoy had committed the heinous crime and that it was the ‘rarest of rare’ cases.”

Justice Kali drew a parallel between the Hetal Parekh and the Indira Gandhi murders. Just as the former Prime Minister was assassinated by her securitymen, Kali said, the 14-year-old girl was killed, after being raped, by a person who was supposed to protect her. Dhananjoy at that time was working as a guard in the apartment building where Hetal’s family lived.

“The Supreme Court had sentenced the assassins of Indira Gandhi to death. This was a similar case, and I had no hesitation in pronouncing the sentence. There was enough evidence to prove the charges of rape and murder against Dhananjoy, even though he had the best defence in Anil Biswas,” Justice Kali said.

The sessions court heard the case on a day-to-day basis. “Incriminating, relevant or circumstantial evidences were aplenty. The man who operated the elevator had seen Dhananjoy go to Hetal’s flat after her mother left. The convict had also talked to the supervisor of the security agency, that had recruited him, from the balcony of the Parekhs’ flat after committing the crime,” the judge recounted.

“The police had recovered a shirt button from Hetal’s fist. It matched the buttons on the shirt Dhananjoy was wearing on the day of the crime. The shirt had one button missing. Hetal’s watch, too, was found in his possession. Even though he denied the charges through the proceedings, I was convinced that Dhananjoy was guilty,” Justice Kali asserted.

“The convict had planned it out and knew exactly what he was up to. Hetal had told her father that Dhananjoy used to tease her whenever she went past him. The father had informed the security agency. When Dhananjoy came to know about it, he wanted to teach her a lesson and killed her,” added the judge who had sentenced him to die.

Additional director-general (railways) Prasun Mukherjee, who headed the inquiry team then as deputy commissioner (detective department), admitted that it was a difficult case. “There was no clue. No one saw the culprit at the place of occurrence,” Mukherjee said.

He gave full credit to his team of sleuths for cracking the case.