Lucknow, Mar 28 (IANS): A dentist and three others have been convicted for the murder of a restaurateur that took place about seven years ago.

Additional district and session judge Mohammad Gazali convicted dentist Namish Trivedi, shooters Subhash Yadav, Saif and Adnan for the murder of Brahm Shanker Khanna a.k.a Bobby -- the owner of Ritz Continental hotel.

Khanna was gunned down in January 2016.

Khanna had died at KGMU two days after he was shot. As the city police failed to crack the case, it was transferred to the STF.

The STF spokesman said that "call details of Namish revealed he was in touch with Subhash who had 17 cases against him. That helped us crack the case".

STF had nabbed Subhash, Saif and Adnan from Azamgarh. The motive behind the murder was a 10,000 square feet hospital-cum residence in Mahanagar owned by Namish.

Khanna used to visit Namish's clinic. The dentist was facing a financial crisis and Khanna offered to pay Rs 7.5 crore for it.

He made an advance payment of Rs 1.5 crore in February 2015.

As per Khanna's friend, animosity between the two started growing thereafter.

Khanna wanted Namish to get the property status changed to freehold from LDA but for that he kept demanding the outstanding amount.

Finally, when the two could not reach any compromise, Namish decided to get him eliminated.