Two men have been sentenced for life while another person received a 16-year jail term for killing a 74-year-old jeweler in Leicester in January this year.
Thomas Jervis, 24, and Charles Mcauley, 20, were both sentenced to life imprisonment at Birmingham Crown Court on Sept. 10 after being found guilty of killing Ramniklal Jogiya, who was abducted on his way back from his shop at Belgrave Road on Jan. 24, 2018. Jogiya was later found dead in a lane nearby.
Jervis was ordered to serve a minimum of 33 years while Mcauley was ordered to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Callan Reeve, 20, who was found guilty of Jogiya’s manslaughter, was sentenced to 16 years in prison at the court hearing.
The three, who had previously admitted to abduction and robbery of Jogiya, were convicted following a five-week trial at the same court which reached its conclusion on Aug. 8.
The trial had heard how Jervis, of Enderby Road, Whetstone, Leicester; Mcauley, of Gooding Avenue, Leicester; and Reeve, of Biddle Road, Leicester, were part of a gang who had spent weeks planning to rob a safe at Jogiya’s jewelry shop.
A fourth defendant, Javon Roach, 30, was acquitted of all charges.
The court heard that the convicted murderers bundled Jogiya in a van and threw his mobile phone away, before torturing and beating him in an attempt to get the security codes for the alarm system and safe at his shop. The men wanted to steal gold jewelry worth £200,000 that was kept in the safe, the court was told, according to the BBC.
A CCTV camera footage showed Jogiya locking up the shop and beginning his walk back to his house, while other images showed three men jumping out of a white transit van parked on Brandon Street and bundling him into a vehicle. Another footage showed that about 50 minutes later, a man dressed in a burka and pulling a shopping trolley entered Jogiya’s shop. This person was seen deactivating the shop alarm, going to the back of the shop where the safe was kept, and emerging a little while later, seemingly empty-handed.
It was later discovered that, despite their meticulous planning, the gang had not realized that the safe was on a 12-hour time delay and so they could not break into the safe and collect the Asian gold inside it, the court was informed.
Earlier, a statement written by the victim’s family and read out by prosecutor James House conveyed what happened on the fatal night, Leicestershire Live reported. It said, “We were taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary and I was asked to identify my dad.
“Nothing could prepare us for what we saw. So many thoughts were racing through our minds as what we did know was that he had suffered.
“We could see terrible injuries on his face.”
Jogiya suffered a total of 27 injuries, including broken ribs, wounds to his face, hands and arms, and died from a major brain injury caused by a severe assault to his head.
“These men had planned to kidnap and rob Mr Jogiya, but it went tragically wrong. They launched a sustained and ferocious attack on Mr Jogiya which ultimately killed him,” DCI David Swift-Rollinson, the detective who led the investigation, said.