Nearly five years after one of Ratlam's most chilling crimes, a sessions court has sentenced three men to triple life imprisonment for the murder of an entire family on the night of Chhoti Diwali. The mastermind behind the killings, however, never made it to trial — he was shot dead in a police encounter just days after the crime.

On the night of November 25, 2020, Govind Solanki, his wife Sharda, and their daughter Divya were shot dead inside their home in the Rajiv Nagar area of Ratlam. All three were shot in the head. The crime went undetected through the night. It was only the next morning that a tenant nurse named Jvelika, living on the ground floor, noticed her Activa scooter was missing. When she went upstairs to ask the landlord about it, she found three bodies on the floor, blood still pooling around them.

Police combed through CCTV footage from the crime scene and surrounding routes. The footage led them to Noori Guest House in Indra Nagar, where one of the accused — Anurag alias Bobby — was eventually traced. Under questioning, he named the others: Dilip Deval, Lala Bhabor, and Golu Bilwal. The latter two were arrested soon after. Dilip Deval, the mastermind, fired at the police team sent to apprehend him and was killed in the retaliatory action on December 4, 2020. A pistol, live cartridges, and looted jewellery were recovered from his rented house.

The case that went to trial rested heavily on forensic evidence. Additional Public Prosecutor Samarth Patidar said 111 material exhibits, 210 documents, and 33 witnesses were placed before the court. DNA from the victims was found on the clothes and footwear of the accused. The scooter used to flee the scene carried Lala's DNA on the handlebars. Ballistic analysis confirmed that the bullets were fired from the pistol recovered from Dilip Deval's house.

Additional Sessions Judge Rajesh Namdev convicted Anurag alias Bobby (33), Golu alias Gaurav (29), and Lala Bhabor (27) on charges of murder and robbery, sentencing each to triple life imprisonment along with a fine.

Dilip Deval was no ordinary criminal. He was a fugitive from Gujarat's Dahod jail, where he had been imprisoned for murder, and had absconded on parole, living in Ratlam under false identity documents. Investigators found he had deliberately chosen the night of Chhoti Diwali so that gunshots would be drowned out by the noise of firecrackers. A separate killing in Ratlam's Kasturba Nagar on May 18, 2020 was also linked to him and his associates.

After the encounter, then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had called Deval a "narpishach" — a human demon — saying such people had no right to live in society. All three surviving accused have been in custody since December 2, 2020.