The Hindu : Sufficient evidence against Sharma, Delhi police tell court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 27, 2002

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National

Sufficient evidence against Sharma, Delhi police tell court

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI AUG. 26. The Delhi police today submitted before the Delhi High Court that they had collected sufficient oral, documentary and circumstantial evidence to nail the suspended Inspector-General (Prison) of Haryana, R.K. Sharma, in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case.

Submitting that it was Mr. Sharma who had plotted the murder, the Special Public Prosecutor (SSP), S.K. Saxena, alluded to the various strands of the case to show to the court how the relationship between Mr. Sharma and Shivani had later turned sour leading to the killing.

He said police had been able to establish that Mr. Sharma and Shivani had a very close relationship and that it turned sour when the police officer parted company with Shivani and she started blackmailing him.

He said this prompted Mr. Sharma to plot a conspiracy to eliminate her.

The SPP submitted that the sequence of the case established so far demanded that Mr. Sharma be subjected to custodial interrogation to tie up the loose ends of the conspiracy theory as there was no direct evidence to connect him to the conspiracy.

Mr. Saxena handed over photocopies of the private papers recovered from the residence of the deceased to the court in an envelope.

Mr. Saxena further said that Shivani had some "documents' which Mr. Sharma wanted to be destroyed, as the killers, after strangling Shivani, had ransacked the house in a bid to destroy all things relating to him.

Counsel for Mr. Sharma, Dinesh Chandra Mathur, said the mere levelling of the charge of murder against Mr. Sharma could not be made a cause for his arrest and the denial of his anticipatory bail application.

Police might be trying to take Mr. Sharma in custody with some ulterior motive at the instance of some influential person.

The arguments were inconclusive with Justice Khan postponing the hearing for Wednesday.

PIL dismissed

The Delhi High Court today dismissed a public interest litigation seeking transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Dismissing the petition by Manish Mishra, son of the former Bihar Chief Minister, Jagannath Mishra, a Division Bench of the court comprising the Chief Justice, S.B. Sinha, and Justice A.K. Sikri said there was nothing so far to suggest that the Delhi police were not investigating the case properly.

"We are of the view that there was no undue influence in the investigation,'' the Division Bench said, rejecting the petition.

Mr. Mishra had submitted that even three weeks after the submission before a court here by the Delhi Police that Shivani had been murdered at the instance of Mr. Sharma, the Delhi police had not been able to arrest him.

The petitioner submitted that the police had so far not investigated the case with an angle of involvement of a third person in the case despite Madhu Sharma, making accusations against the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Pramod Mahajan, and claiming that police were in possession of a audio cassette of the conversation between Shivani and the Minister.

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