Six men accused of lynching British tourist Stephen Bennett in December 2006 were acquitted by a Mangaon Additional Sessions Court on Saturday. Bennett was travelling from Goa to Mumbai when he was killed. Additional District Judge Vilas Patil pronounced the final judgment after a four-year trial and acquitted the six accused from Malasai village. Ramesh Mene,Vithoba Mene,Nathuram Mohite,Raju Malusare,Kashiram Marathe and Ravindra Dalvi were charged with Bennetts murder and picked up from their homes soon after Bennetts badly assaulted body was found on December 11,2006,hanging from a tree on a hill in Malasai. The High Court had granted the accused bail in 2007. The case was first handled by the Roha local police,but later shifted to the Alibaug Crime Branch since the body was found in the Raigad jurisdiction. The prosecution maintained through the trial that Bennett got off the train at Roha junction on December 7 and his body was found in the early hours of December 11. The statements collected,including that of prime witness Narayan Mohite who allegedly saw the villagers beating the tourist on December 10,was cited as the main prosecution evidence. The chargesheet had stated that Bennett was killed after he allegedly attacked and tried to molest a woman named Nirmala,wife of the prime accused Ramesh. The fury of the villagers over this alleged indecent act was shown as the motive behind the murder. The first intimation of Bennetts death to his family was that it was a suicide,but the police later informed Bennetts family in Cheltenham that the murder was an act of honour killing. We did not get the support of the prime witness. His statement was recorded in front of a judicial magistrate,but he retracted later. We will now go for an appeal in this case taking this point, said public prosecutor Satish Mhatre. Of the 28 witnesses,most of the important ones retracted their statements at various stages of the trial. Another blow to the prosecutions theory came when the panch witnesses told the court they never visited the crime scene. Defense lawyer Pravin Thakur claimed the acquittal was expected. We are happy with the judgment. We were successful in proving the various contradictions in the investigation. The records prove that Bennett made the last call to his mother from a junction called Wadkhal,which does not come in the railway distance between Goa and Mumbai. This proves that he never travelled by train and had taken the road. The other aspect which we were able to debunk is the sequence of events according to the investigation,which states he was in Roha village on December 10. The investigation could never explain the sequence properly from there on as it was nothing but a concocted story, claimed Thakur. Bennetts family still believes his death has a Goa link to it and that he could have been followed by his murderers from Goa.
