A Delhi court on Monday awarded life term to suspended assistant commissioner of police S S Rathi and nine other policemen, convicted for killing two innocent businessmen in a fake encounter at Connaught Place 10 years ago.

"I sentence them to life imprisonment," Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar said, pronouncing the quantum of punishment to 10 policemen, including the then assistant commissioner of police.

The court had, on October 16, held all the accused policemen guilty of gunning down two Haryana-based businessmen Pradeep Goyal and Jagjit Singh at Connaught Place in Delhi on March 31, 1997.

Earlier, CBI counsel S K Saxena demanded death penalty for Head Constable Mahaveer Singh and Constable Kothari Ram, whose bullets had killed the victims and ACP Rathi, who had led the operation, saying that their culpability fell under the rarest of rare category warranting capital punishment.