KOZHIKODE: The Manjeri additional sessions court convicted Thursday three people of culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the sensational Shaba Sherif case, a rare instance in legal history of a conviction being secured without the recovery of the victim’s body or body parts.
A hair sample collected from the car used to transport the victim’s body parts provided a positive mitochondrial DNA match; it was the key evidence that led to conviction.
Judge M Thushar convicted first accused Shaibin Ashraf (37), a businessman from Mukkatta; second accused and Shaibin’s manager Ponnakkaran Shihabudheen (39) of Sulthan Bathery; and the sixth accused, Shaibin’s driver Naduttodika Nishad (32), in the case related to the 2020 murder of Sherif, a Mysuru-based traditional healer.
The accused were convicted under IPC Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), conspiracy (120 b), 365 (kidnapping), 347 (wrongful confinement) and 201 (destruction of evidence), read with 34. The prosecution had sought a conviction under IPC Sec 302 (murder), but the absence of a body or postmortem report posed challenges. The court will pronounce the sentence Saturday.
Nine other accused, including Shaibin’s wife Fasna and retired sub-inspector S Sundaran, were acquitted.
According to the prosecution, Shaibin and other accused abducted Sherif on Aug 1, 2019, and kept him captive in Shaibin’s house for 14 months and tortured him. They allegedly wanted to extract the secret formula of an “ottamooli” (a single-ingredient folk cure) he used to treat piles and make money by selling the medicine. Sherif’s body was allegedly chopped into pieces and thrown into Chaliyar river.
