Mangaluru, Mar 29: The sixth additional district and sessions court has acquitted 17 of the 23 accused in the 12 year old murder case of BJP leader Sukhananda Shetty.
Shetty, who was also a sitting member of Mulki town panchayat, was hacked to death at Kulai Honnakatte area in Surathkal on December 1, 2006.
The incident occurred when Sukhananda Shetty was on the way to his office. The accused, who came in an SUV, attacked Shetty just when he was going towards his office, after parking his vehicle behind the office premise. He was declared dead on the way to hospital.
A special police team had chargesheeted 23 people in the case. Akbar Kabeer, a resident of Gurpur, was named as the primed accused. Kabeer was a rowdy-sheeter and was involved in several criminal cases, all of which are communally motivated offences.
The advocate representing the accused said that as the witnesses in the murder turned hostile, after which the court acquitted all the accused.
However, over the years, among the 23 accused, Kabeer and Madur Isubu were murdered, two others were killed in shootouts with the police, and two more are still at large.
Kabeer, who is also accused in the Polali Ananthu murder, was hacked to death in 2011, while in November 2015, five henchmen of Akashbhavan Sharan, an associate of fugitive Vikki Shetty, lodged in jail as undertrials, murdered Madoor Isubu in jail.
Mulky Rafique, another accused in the murder, was killed in an encounter with police near Udupi railway station in 2007. Athik alias Sudheer too was murdered in a shootout with the police.
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