The Hindu : Bizarre twists to a simple case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 24, 2002

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Bizarre twists to a simple case

By Prashant Pandey

EVEN AS the police are on the lookout for the main accused in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, the story so far has not been different from the other high-profile cases in the recent past. A case looking prima facie simple gathers unusually bizarre dimensions as the accused evade the law or upset its applecart midway through investigations and even trial. The police blame it on the media and lack of necessary legal provisions to nail the accused.

To begin with, the way Madhu Sharma, wife of R.K. Sharma, has managed to divert the attention of the police by first claiming that he is being framed, then naming a Union Minister and still later approaching the National Human Rights Commission is all too well known. Initially, the police denied any frame up, then the Minister denied his involvement and later the NHRC refused to intervene. On the other hand, the police had to face another petition as one of the arrested accused filed a contempt petition alleging that the police had not followed the Supreme Court while arresting him.

All this may have looked like making the right noises, without allowing anything concrete in favour of the accused, but it has helped to buy him time and take the focus -- successfully to an extent -- away from the main line of investigation.

Police officials maintain that the phrase "high profile'' is a media creation and they do not go about a case with that attitude. "What matters is what is the crime committed and who has done it,'' says a senior police official.

According to the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), U.K. Katna, the accused would always try to gather whatever he could in his defence. Thus, whatever is written or shown in relation to the case in the media is lapped up by the defence.

The police have been maintaining earlier that Madhu has been using the media on the advice of the lawyers. Obviously, with media spotlight already there on the case, every little mistake committed by the investigating agency would be highlighted.

Police officials maintain in order to call the bluff of the accused there was a need to strengthen criminal jurisprudence by bringing about reforms in key areas such as admissibility of evidence. Already, elite commissions and committees are deliberating on it.

But while the media is blamed to a large extent for providing a platform for the accused to shore up his defence, it is not that the police have much of a way in the cases which are not in the media glare.

The reason for this simply being that when the rich and the powerful are involved, legal opinion is readily available. They are able to find sympathisers, which allows them to play hide and seek with the police. They are able to procure legal reprieve in the form of anticipatory bail from far off places. Finally, the witnesses against them turn hostile when the case comes up for trial. Or some or the other technicality becomes an excuse for them getting relief.

This is not to say that the police do much better when the media is not prying around. There are many cases when the police have been pulled up by the courts for slipping on the basics of investigation. In some extreme cases, police officials have been penalised for trying to influence the witness in their favour.

A testimony to the fact about shoddy police investigations is an abysmally low rate of conviction. It is just that when the media are not around, they have relative ease in showing the number of worked out cases.

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