Alipore: Former Trinamul Congress councillor Shambhu Nath Kow was on Monday sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a party colleague five years ago.

The additional district sessions judge of Alipore court, Sujoy Sengupta, who sentenced Kow, also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on him. Kow will have to spend another six months in jail if he fails to pay the fine.

Five other co-accused were also sentenced to life-imprisonment.

The court had last week held Kow and his associates guilty of murder but acquitted his nephew Debasish Sarkar, who had been charged with harbouring criminals.

On March 20, 2013, Kow, then councillor of Ward 58 of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, had dealt a fatal blow to Adhir Maity at Mathpukur in the Pragati Maidan area, off the Bypass. The attack was the the fallout of a row over whether a temple and a few shops should be relocated from a road leading to a condominium where Kow allegedly had stakes.

Kow fled the city after the fatal attack and was arrested a fortnight later in Uttar Pradesh.

Another Trinamul Congress leader, Mohammad Iqbal (Munna), is facing trial in a murder case. He stands accused of masterminding a shooting outside Harimohan Ghosh College in Garden Reach that left Calcutta police sub-inspector Tapas Chowdhury dead in 2013. Iqbal was then chairman of Borough XV.

In 2007, Sudhir Bhattacharya, former CPM chairman of Dum Dum Municipality, had been held guilty of masterminding the murder of his party colleague and successor in the civic body, Sailen Das, in 2001.