The Supreme Court on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment six men held guilty of killing Indian Oil Corporation sales manager S Manjunath, who had exposed corruption and oil adulteration racket in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh.

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana trashed the appeals filed by the convicts against the 2009 verdict of the Allahabad High Court, which had convicted the six men and acquitted two others in case of killing Manjunath.

Manjunath was a graduate from IIM-Lucknow who was 27-year-when he was murdered on 19th November 2005.

He was shot dead when he reached the petrol pump, owned by prime accused Pawan Kumar alias Monu Mittal, to collect samples of adulterated petrol allegedly being sold from his outlet.

According to the prosecution, Manjunath had threatened to cancel the licence of Mittal’s petrol pump for selling adulterated fuel, which formed the motive for the accused to kill him.