IANS

NEW DELHI, Oct 17: A Delhi court Tuesday convicted 10 Delhi Police personnel, including an assistant commissioner of police (ACP), for gunning down two businessmen in the capital's business district Connaught Place in 1997 after suspecting them to be dangerous criminals.

While holding the now suspended ACP Satyaveer Singh Rathee and his nine-member team guilty of killing businessmen Pradeep Goel and Jagjeet Singh in broad daylight outside Statesman House, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar fixed Oct 24 for announcing the quantum of sentence.

"You all have been found guilty" of the charges of murder, attempt to murder and destruction of evidence, said the judge, delivering his verdict in the case exactly 10 years, six months and 15 days after that fateful March 31, 1997 when the two men were mistaken for mobster Mohammed Yaseen.

All 10 policemen were taken into custody after the judgment was pronounced.

The court also found Delhi Police's ballistic expert Roop Singh guilty of fabricating evidence and issued notice to him to appear before the court Oct 22.

Roop Singh had earlier been found guilty of fabricating ballistic evidence in the murder of ramp model Jessica Lal in 1999 by the Delhi High Court.

Besides ACP Rathee, the others convicted Tuesday include inspectors Anil Kumar and Ashok Rana and policemen Shiv Kumar, Tejpal Singh, Mahaveer Singh, Sumer Singh, Subhash Chand, Sunil Kumar and Khetan Ram.

The trigger-happy police team had opened fire on Goel's car, killing two of its occupants and severely injuring a third one, Tarun Preet Singh, mistaking them for the wanted mobster and his friends.

The team had been tailing the car from the Minto Road underpass, also in the heart of the city, and intercepted it near Statesman House.

ACP Rathee claimed later that he had learnt that the mobster and his associates would be travelling in a blue colour Maruti Esteem car. The car carrying the innocent businessmen fitted that description.

The policemen said they opened fire because those inside the car failed to obey the police command to come out of the car immediately.

The case was later probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which found the police team not merely guilty of killing the two innocent people but also of fabricating evidence to prove their innocence.

They were found to have planted a pistol on the businessmen's bodies to prove their claim that they opened fire in self-defence.