Aftab Ansari, the Dubai don awarded death for the American Center attack, and four others were sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday for conspiring to abduct footwear baron Partha Pratim Roy Burman for ransom in 2001.

The 100-page verdict by additional district sessions judge Biswarup Bandyopadhyay also confirmed what was suspected but not proved until the last stage of the trial — that the Khadim’s group paid a few crores to Ansari for Roy Burman’s release.

“After accessing interactions between Aftab and the other accused through emails, the investigation has come to the conclusion that the mastermind (Aftab) had collected Rs 3.75 crore from Sidhartha Roy Burman, brother of Partha Pratim Roy Burman, and the money was sent to Dubai from Calcutta through hawala,” one of the public prosecutors said, quoting from the verdict.

Nobody from the family was available for comment.

The court acquitted 17 of the accused, including four who have spent almost eight years in jail. But there will be no relief for one of those to have been acquitted, Jamaluddin Nasir, because he has been awarded the death sentence along with Aftab for the American Center attack on January 2, 2002. The remaining 13 in the acquitted list have been out on bail.

Ansari (top) and Roy Burman

Aftab, in striped T-shirt and blue jeans, remained seated without a hint of emotion on his face while everyone else got up from their seats when the judge pronounced his verdict in the terrace court at Alipore jail. Happy Singh alias Harpreet Singh, who got a life term along with Abdur Rahman Kunji, Yakub Ali and Shahabuddin Shaukat, looked a shattered man, special public prosecutor Naba Kumar Ghosh said.

“Happy Singh shook his head repeatedly after hearing the verdict. He then slumped in his chair. Those who were acquitted clapped in joy,” he said.

The four men who actually carried out the abduction under instructions from Ansari were not part of the trial. They are being tried in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad for their involvement in other cases. All of them were arrested from different places within three months of the abduction.

Roy Burman was abducted on July 25, 2001, when he was headed for a Khadim’s factory off Tiljala.

Aslam Ali, Maruf Sheikh, Shahabad and Sadafat were waiting at an intersection for his Tata Safari to pass by. They fired two shots, dragged him out of the vehicle and whisked him away in a Maruti 800.

According to the CID, Roy Burman was freed after Ansari received a part of the ransom in Dubai. The footwear baron returned to his Salt Lake home on August 2.

Roy Burman was declared “hostile” by the court — the trial began on July 7, 2005 — because he refused to identify the accused in court despite revealing the mastermind’s identity to the CID earlier.

No member of the Roy Burman family was present in court on judgment day but a crowd, mainly relatives and acquaintances of some of the accused, gathered outside Alipore central jail well before the proceedings began around 2pm.

Traffic police had a hard time trying to keep the crowd from disrupting traffic.

Special public prosecutor Ghosh said the nine jailed accused, including Ansari, were brought to the court lock-up first. The 13 who were on bail entered a little later.

There were altogether 33 accused in the case, including the four who abducted Roy Burman, two approvers and two others who were killed in police encounters. Three are still absconding. The CID had compiled a list of around 200 witnesses, of whom 139 deposed in court.