Allahabad High Court upholds life sentence for 2009 Hardoi quadruple killing

A division bench of the Allahabad High Court's Lucknow bench, comprising Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan and Justice Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary, dismissed the appeal of Vinay Pratap Singh, alias Bablu, against his 2014 conviction for killing four people in Hardoi in 2009, Hindustan Times reported. The trial court had convicted Singh under sections 302, 307 and 404 of the Indian Penal Code and section 3(2)(5) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. His victims were his live-in partner Babita, an anganwadi worker, her mother Nandrani, and Babita's two children, all found dead with nooses tied around their necks on the morning of 24 June 2009, post-mortem findings in each case pointed to ante-mortem ligature strangulation. Singh's appeal argued the case rested only on circumstantial evidence, with no direct witness, an incomplete chain of circumstances, a doubtful last-seen theory and a false implication rooted in a property dispute, but the bench, ruling on 27 July, held that every incriminating circumstance the prosecution relied on stood proved.