BAREILLY: It’s taken 29 years for a court in Bareilly to sentence two men to five years in prison for stealing Rs 370 from a man they had drugged in a train in 1988. The court of the additional district and sessions judge in Bareilly has, in its order on Tuesday, also fined the accused Rs 10,000 each. A third accused died in 2004. On October 21, 1988, Chandra Pal, Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh had offered Wajid Husain tea laced with drugs as he was travelling on a train from Shahjahanpur to Punjab for a job. The three had then taken away the Rs 370 that Husain had in his pocket.Additional district government counsel Suresh Babu Sahu said, “An FIR was lodged against three people under IPC Sections 379 ( theft ), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) . In 2004, it came to light that Pal had died. Then the case was transferred to the court of the additional district and sessions judge against Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh.” Pal remained absconding for 16 long years.Husain, who is 59 years old now, last came to court in 2012 to depose against the accused. The two surviving accused, Lal and Sarvesh, who are now in their sixties and have grown-up sons and daughters in their native village in Hardoi, UP, regret the “gross mistake” they made back then due to what they termed “consequences of youth”. They now say the real punishment for them was the trial and not the jail term they have been given now. “The closure is a cause for happiness,”Sarvesh said.