Justice served two decades on

Dubai: Nearly two decades on, a man who brutally killed a family of five in Dubai after reportedly raping the mother and daughter, has been given capital punishment after being convicted of murder by Indian authorities.

A Central Bureau of Investigation court in Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat passed the verdict on Ravji Manu Pavar yesterday.

The death sentence was pronounced by Special Judge R. M. Parmar, who called the crime the ‘rarest of rare' cases.

Pavar, now 53, had been working with the family for 12 years as a domestic helper. He had fled to India after committing the murders, but was later arrested by the Indian authorities after they were alerted by Dubai Police.

On January 4, 1992, five members of an Indian family — father, mother, two children and their grandmother — were found battered to death in their apartment in Al Karama.

Ramesh Sagar, a bank employee, his wife, Rajouri, a teacher, his two children, Jyoti, 13, Jayesh, 11, and his mother Moolibai Kishenbai, had been murdered.

The police were alerted the day after the crime by neighbours and relatives who suspected something was wrong since the family did not respond to phone calls or answer the door.

Police found two blood-stained cricket bats and a kitchen knife in the apartment. The victims had been hit on the head with the bats while the mother had been stabbed five to six times in the neck.

Autopsies confirmed that the murders were committed between 2pm and 6.30pm, starting with the grandmother.

Commenting on the murder, back in 1992, Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai Police Chief, said that although there was no extradition treaty between Dubai and India at the time, he was confident that justice would be delivered wherever the killer was found.

Heinous crime

After Dubai Police identified the missing domestic helper Ravji Manu Pavar as the suspect and sent the details of the case to India, Indian police arrested Pavar in his village Navsari on January 8, 1992. He was imprisoned in India as the investigation progressed. Gold jewellery and a camera, belonging to the family, were recovered from Pavar.

Indian police established that the teenage daughter was raped by Pavar while she was undressing after returning from school. When the girl threatened to inform her family, Pavar first killed the grandmother and covered the body with a sheet to conceal it from the others.

Pavar killed the remaining family members one by one as they came home. He also raped the mother.

The bodies of the father and son were found on the floor, the wife's and daughter's bodies were found in separate bedrooms and the grandmother's body was on the couch.