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News India Times August 21, 2015
– that’s all you need to know
Community
–WASHINGTON
I
ndian-American attorney
Richa Naujoks née Gautam
has been shortlisted for
Thomson Reuters Foundation’s
TrustLaw Lawyer of the Year
award.
Celebrating groundbreaking
pro bono projects undertaken by
legal teams with NGOs and
social enterprises around the
world, the award recognizes
lawyers who have gone above
and beyond in providing excep-
tional pro bono support.
Among individual nominees,
Richa Naujoks is the only Indian
and the only U.S. lawyer short-
listed for this prestigious award,
said a statement.
A senior associate at Nixon
Peabody LLP’s NewYork City
office, she is a graduate of the
National Law School of India
University in Bangalore and the
University ofWashington in
Seattle (LLM). She currently
serves as co-chair of the India
Committee of the American Bar
Association’s Section of
International Law.
Richa Naujoks was nominated
by Mumbai-basedWello for her
outstanding pro bono work on
the complex restructuring of
Wello’s U.S. and Indian legal and
operational structure. Wello
makes water wheels that help
women safely carry water from
distant water sources to their
homes.
TrustLaw connects the world’s
leading legal teams to provide
free legal assistance to organiza-
tions working for social and
environmental change. It is able
to draw from its network of over
100,000 lawyers across the world
to meet the legal needs of NGOs
and social enterprises.
In addition toWello, other
South Asian projects and NGOs
are represented within the vari-
ous categories for the 2015
awards. Indian firm LawQuest is
nominated for its support of
Nazdeek Trust with multiple
projects around its efforts to
organize tea workers for right of
association and a basic mini-
mum wage. Norton Rose
Fulbright South Africa coordi-
nated a team of firms including
White and Case, Mughal
Barristers, J Sagar Associates,
and Blake, Cassels & Graydon
LLP to provide research on the
admissibility of character evi-
dence in rape cases for the
Bangladesh Legal Aid and
Services Trust (BLAST).
Linklaters led a team of
lawyers from Hewlett-Packard
Company, HSBC Bank PLC, DLA
Piper, and Adnan Kelana
Haryanto & Hermanto to help
Indian NGOVidya Sagar under-
stand legal capacity in disability
legislation.
– IANS
Two Men Found Guilty Of Plotting Murder-For-Hire
By Ela Dutt
n what reads like a movie
script with a happy end-
ing – two men, one of them
in a love-triangle, hire a hit
man who balks at the
killing, turns them in to police,
and no one dies. But investigators
argue the life of a woman is more
precious in America than in India
and the men should be punished
for planning to cash in on a mul-
timillion dollar life insurance pol-
icy.
Pratik Kumar Patel and his
cousin Kalpesh Patel from
Tennessee were found guilty Aug.
13, of trying to murder Pratik’s
wife Krupa Patel, after drawing
up a $6 million life insurance pol-
icy in her name. But when they
hired Chris Robinson, their
handyman of longstanding, he
changed his mind and reported
them to the police. They were
arrested two years ago and con-
victed by a jury Aug. 13 in a
Circuit Court inMurfreesboro,
Tennessee.
They will be sentenced by
Judge David Bragg Oct. 16 but
attorneys for the defendants say
they will appeal the judgment in
the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
Assistant District Attorney Sarah
Davis told News India Times she
anticipated the appeal would be
denied. The conspiracy charge is
an A felony which means jail for
15 to 25 years for the schemers.
“Pretty much every defendant
tries an appeal. But that doesn’t
change the conviction,” Davis
said.
Krupa Patel, who attended the
closing arguments, insisted
through the years that her hus-
band would not have killed her.
“I don’t know how his wife is
doing but I felt so bad,” Davis
said. “She stayed by him the
whole time and he was telling her
it was not true even though they
pretty much admitted it in court.
Yet she kept saying ‘He wouldn’t
hurt me. He wouldn’t do it’,”
Davis recalled.
Davis said Krupa Patel’s side of
the family was in India and she
may not have any other support
in this country.
In dramatic closing hearings
reported inMurfreesboro Post,
Assistant District Attorney John
Zimmerman lined up as evi-
dence, bags of purported money
along the jury box banister and
asked the jury what price they
would put on a woman’s life.
“Whatever life is like in northern
India, in America the life of every
woman matters,” he is quoted
saying in court.
Defense attorneys claim irreg-
ularities in the investigation and
improperly handled evidence are
grounds for appeal. “We believe
there are a number of issues that
are subject to appeal, and we
plan to do so,” Defense Attorney
Alex Little is quoted saying in the
news report. Another defense
attorney for the Patel cousins
contended there was no hit man
in the case and hence no crime.
“The commission of the crime
was impossible. It was never
going to happen,” Defense
Attorney EdYarbrough is quoted
saying.
Davis said that most such
cases where hit men are hired,
tragically end up with a murder
taking place. In court Davis is
quoted as saying, “The only rea-
son these two men are not guilty
of murder is because Mr.
Robinson decided not to commit
the crime.”
Robinson had been working as
a handyman for Kalpesh Patel for
many years, and according to
Davis, when the cousins asked
him to do the killing, they also
insisted he tell them yes or no
quickly as they had several others
lined up for the job. “He
(Robinson) was afraid they would
go to someone else. He told them
he would do it,” Davis told News
India Times. But then he went to
the police.
Robinson testified that he was
assigned to go to Krupa and
Pratik Patel’s house in Gallatin on
Oct. 1, 2013, shoot her and turn
the house upside down to make it
look like a burglary gone wrong.
He also said he had been given
$15,000 by Pratik Patel and told to
go buy a gun and get rid of it in
the river after committing the
crime, the Post reported.
In the mix was Pratik’s love
interest, Tina Newman, who testi-
fied August. 12, that she was
romantically tied to Pratik Patel
for several years when she
worked in his stores and that he
often referred to her as his “wife.”
She said she did not know about
the conspiracy to kill Krupa Patel
but that their love relationship
got more intense in the days lead-
ing up to Pratik Patel’s arrest Sept.
30, 2013. Texts and voice mes-
sages exchanged between the two
were played in court.
I
Pratik Kumar Patel, left, is led out of the courtroom by a sergeant with the Rutherford, Tenn., County Sheriff’s Department after being convicted of solicitation and conspiracy to
commit first-degree murder of his wife Krupa Patel Aug. 13. Photo right, Kalpesh Patel, cousin of Pratik Kumar Patel, is led out of the courtroom by authorities after conviction.
Indian-American Lawyer Shortlisted
For Prestigious Award
A
n international team of
astronomers, includ-
ing an Indian-
American research student,
has discovered a Jupiter like
exoplanet outside earth’s
solar system just a 100 light
years away.
Researchers including
Rahul I. Patel, a Ph.D student
in Physics & Astronomy
Department of Stony Brook
University, NewYork, are call-
ing the exoplanet a “young
Jupiter” because it shares
many characteristics of
Jupiter.
A paper outlining the full
findings is published in
Science.
The finding could serve as
a decoder ring for
astronomers to understand
how planets formed around
the sun as it provides an
opportunity to look at
younger star systems in the
earlier phase of development,
according to a media release.
Called 51 Eridani b, the
exoplanet is the ‘faintest’ one
on record, and also shows the
strongest methane signature
ever detected on an alien
planet, which should yield
additional clues as to how the
planet formed.
“We found that 51 Eridani
is surrounded by warm dust
that indicates the presence of
an asteroid belt,” said Patel.
“Finding dust around a
star is like seeing a large sign-
post that tells us there might
be a planet,” he added.
“This is because the dust is
usually created when lots of
large asteroids collide and
destroy each other, usually
pushed around by a large
planet - like 51 Eridani b.”
Patel led NASA’sWide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer
(WISE) to search for any ther-
mal glow that dust and ice
grains resulting from colli-
sions among asteroids and
comets in the Solar System
can produce.
– IANS
Rahul Patel In Team That
Discovered Jupiter-like Planet
