Clad in a starched white kurta, Pravin Mahajan sat on a bench in court, casually chatting with his bespectacled wife, Sarangi, on Monday morning.
For the 10-odd minutes that Judge SP Davare took to read out a two-page typed note that held Pravin guilty of murdering his elder brother Pramod, not a frown wrinkled the calm composure of the 48-year-old accused
Clad in a starched white kurta, Pravin Mahajan sat on a bench in court, casually chatting with his bespectacled wife, Sarangi, on Monday morning. At 11.15 am, as his case was called out, he walked up to the front of the courtroom, slipped off his black leather slippers and stood calmly in the dock.
For the 10-odd minutes that Judge SP Davare took to read out a two-page typed note that held Pravin guilty of murdering his elder brother, Pramod, not a frown wrinkled the calm composure of the 48-year-old accused. An instinctive tightening of his grip on the wooden frame of the dock, and an occasional dab of his white handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his trimmed moustache, were all the emotions he gave away. “This is no surprise,” he said reacting to his conviction.
Sarangi, however, could not hold back her tears. Consoling her after stepping down, Pravin was heard saying, “Have faith in God.” He then turned to a reporter and chided him for risking his life by hanging out of a vehicle while following the police van. That definitely was an unusual concern for a man facing a possible death sentence, or a lifetime in jail at the least.
Sarangi’s brothers, Prasad and Shailendra Pulliwar, joined the Mahajan couple. For a while, they sat together, discussing how to run the household. Pravin briefly spoke to his lawyers Harshad Ponda and Mukesh Modi, who will argue on the quantum of his sentence on Tuesday. Pravin had lunch with his wife around 2 pm and was on his way back to Arthur Road jail around 2.30 pm.
Pravin’s twin children were not present at the court. “They heard the news on television and were inconsolable even though their grandmother and mother had been repeatedly telling them for the past 10 days to be prepared for the worst,” Prasad told DNA. The Pulliwar brothers are paying the litigation costs. Nobody from Pramod’s family was present in court when the verdict was pronounced.
m_anshika@dnaindia.net
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