Twenty-five years after he was first charged with attempted murder, the Bombay High Court has acquitted a man accused of pumping 105 pellets into a jailor’s hand as revenge for having assaulted him while he was in prison. The offence dates back to December 1988 and took place in the residential quarters of Thane Central Prison.

Three months before the offence, jailor Bhagwan Jagtap had reportedly chastised Prabhakar Rane, then 32, and two of his co-inmates, while demanding they return to their barracks. He had also allegedly beaten and slapped the three of them. On December 28, 1988 around 2.15 pm while Jagtap was reading the newspaper in his quarters, three people in a blue Fiat arrived there and shot at him.