Cops to rely on circumstantial evidence to build case

NEW DELHI: After the acquittal of former IPS officer R K Sharma in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, the police began a para-wise analysis of the high court order at the Rohini SIT office on Friday. The cops are now banking on circumstantial evidence to nail Sharma when they challenge the order at the Supreme Court. "We have been in talks with our legal team and have found the mere technical glitches in call records alone will not weaken our case.We are working towards building a logical case," said DCP (crime) Ashok Chand.
It has been decided that the prosecution will use other circumstantial evidence like the links between the four men to establish Sharma's guilt. They will show how the convicted Pradeep was in constant touch with R K Sharma; that Pradeep was Satya Prakash's nephew; that Prakash was Sri Bhagwan's tenant. Further, Sharma had come down to Delhi and lodged himself at Ashok Hotel on the day of the murder, which goes on to show that Pradeep had gone to the IP Extension flat at Sharma's behest.
Police said what has made matters worse is that they do not have any access to all the senior officers who investigated the case at that point of time. ACP Hemant Kumar Chopra, who analyzed the call record details died some time later. Mukund Upadhye, DCP (crime) at that time, retired along with former commissioner of police R S Gupta, who had ordered the case to be reopened in 2002 after it had been put on the back burner. Even the crime branch unit - anti-homicide unit - has been disbanded and the case will now either be handled by the Special Unit or the SIT of the crime branch. "After the lower court convicted all of them, we were sure that the same arguments would hold good at the high court. However, it has not happened,'' he said.
The main reason for Sharma's acquittal was the failure of Delhi Police to link him to the murderer by way of call records. Delhi high court found that call records placed as evidence by the prosecution were tampered with/manipulated - certain details were blanked out, new ones were introduced - and therefore the evidence was "unreliable". The cops had earlier claimed these include the "technical glitches" including Y2K bug'' which led to the problems with the exhibit.''
On Friday, when TOI contacted two other investigating officers of the case - the one who arrested Sharma and the other who prepared the records - both claimed the cops could not have tampered with anything and that the onus of providing call details was on telecom service providers. But why was Shivani's residence phone call details on the day of the murder not put up as exhibit? Both retired cops said it was ACP Hemant who had handled the call details - laying the onus on the deceased officer. Sources said with such major details, the call record details might be sidelined.
These records, the police claimed, showed killer Pradeep Sharma, using his personal landline number was constantly in touch with co-accused Sri Bhagwan Sharma on the latter's mobile phone. Sri Bhagwan on the other hand was passing instruction received from R K Sharma to Pradeep, according to the police and proved the link between R K Sharma and the killer.
Trying to complete the chain of circumstantial evidence, the prosecution also that the relationship between the four accused was a very old one and clearly establishes the motive behind the killing, in my view. In its appeal the prosecution needs to show how the four were in touch with each other continuously in the run up to the crime. What is interesting is that the MTNL records show one of the landlines didn't belong to Pradeep Sharma but to one Ram Phal Sharma. In a village, they argued, neighbours usually used a common line. Remember it was 1999 and the technology was not as advanced at that time.
However, the police claim withered under HC's minute scrutiny of the phone records, and the entire prosecution case crumbled as it even failed to prove that calls were exchanged between the said landline and the mobile number on the date of murder. Once the most direct and basic link between Pradeep and Sri Bhagwan collapsed, HC chose not to entertain other circumstantial evidence surrounding the alleged conspirators.
Even as the cops begun a para by para'' analysis of the High Court order acquitting former IPS officer R K Sharma in the journalist Shivani Bhatnagar murder case at its Rohini SIT office on Friday, the cops yet again claimed they have enough circumstantial evidence to proceed against Sharma when they will challenge the order at the Supreme Court.
Prima facie, it has been decided that prosecution will impress on the other circumstantial evidence available like the convicted Pradeep staying in constant touch with R K Sharma, that convicted Satya Prakash was the nephew of Satya Prakash and that Prakash was a tenant of Sri Bhagwan and the fact that Sharma had come down to Delhi and lodged himself at Ashok Hotel and was very much present on the day Shivani was murdered to show that the professional killer Pradeep had gone to the IP Extension flat on the instructions of Sharma.