On Friday, the court of judge SMA Abidi had convicted all eight — Mittal, Devesh Agnihotri, Sanjay Awasthi, Rakesh Anand, Shiv Kesh Giri alias Lalla, Harish Mishra, Vivek Sharma and Rajesh Verma — in the “planned” murder.

“It was a crime in which a person whose duty was to check the petrol pumps and to stop the irregularities being committed, was put to death in a planned way,” Abidi said while sentencing the convicts.

“It has come in the evidence of PW 4 (prosecution witness no. 4) that inquiries were being made by Pawan Kumar Mittal about his (Manjunath’s) programme. It shows that it was a planned murder. The victim was...put to death without provocation,” Abidi said.

The prosecution urged the court to award capital punishment to two other, Agnihotri and Verma, arguing that Agnihotri had fired the gun. The lawyer also argued that even Verma was equally culpable as he had supplied his licensed weapons to Mittal and Agnihotri.

The defence pleaded for leniency for Mittal, saying his parents are old and he has young children. Mittal’s lawyer V D Pandey later told reporters that his client would challenge the judgment in High Court.

The lawyer for Manjunath Trust, I B Singh, said he would press for death penalty for at least two other accused — Agnihotri and Verma — in the High Court. In his verdict, the judge accepted the prosecution theory that Mittal Automibiles’ petrol pump at Gola Gokarn was the site of crime. “The petrol pump known as Mittal Automobiles was inspected by the deceased as sales officer (of) Indian Oil Corporation in mid-September, 2005 and again he grew suspicion about the working of the said petrol pump in November, 2005,” the judge said.

Manjunath’s body was recovered from a spot under the Maholi police station in Sitapur on November 20, 2005. An IIM-Lucknow graduate, Manjunath is believed to have unearthed a fraud in which petrol and diesel were being adulterated with kerosene in Lakhimpur, and was trying to stop it. The case’s investigating officer, P K Shukla, said the “judgment would deter criminals from targeting honest people”.

WHO DID WHAT

• Monu Mittal: prime accused, son of the pump owner, told Devesh Agnihotri to kill Manjunath

• Devesh Agnihotri: Monu’s friend, he fired shot

• Sanjay Awasthi & Harish Mishra: pump employees, trapped Manjunath, destroyed evidence

• Rakesh Kumar & Vivek Sharma: Monu’s driver and employee, arrested with Manjunath’s body in Sitapur

• Lalla Giri: employee, tried to destroy evidence

• Rajesh Verma: friend, sheltered the accused, lent weapon