RANCHI, July 15 -- The Jharkhand High Court on Tuesday upheld the life sentences for Lakhan Verma and Rahul Verma who the trial court convicted in the Dhanbad judge Uttam Anand murder case. The court called the intentional hit-and-run a planned attack on the judiciary. The judgment was delivered by a division bench of Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay and Justice Pradeep Kumar Srivastava. "The court dismissed the appeals filed by the convicts and agreed with the trial court's strict punishment," a high court advocate close to the matter informed. The high court order uploaded on the website confirmed the fact. "The enormity of the act of the appellants and the audacious nature of its execution has been an affront to the judiciary encapsulating serious concerns over the safety and security of the Judicial Officers. As we have discussed and observed above, based on the voluminous records of the case, the complicity and culpability of the appellants is palpable. The impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence embodies the features of the case and the role played by the appellants. We do not find any rationale to arrive at a different conclusion and based on the reasonings enunciated by us, we dismiss this appeal," the order reads. On July 28, 2021, around 5 AM, Judge Uttam Anand went out for his morning walk in Dhanbad. While he was walking on the side of the road, an auto-rickshaw swerved and hit him from behind....