Links between accused key to nailing the killers, ex-prosecutors

NEW DELHI: Close links between the four men acquitted in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case need to be highlighted before the Supreme Court if the prosecution wants to reverse the HC verdict, feel ex-prosecutors closely connected with the trial.
S K Saxena, who was special prosecutor for Delhi Police during the murder trial, told TOI that they had succeeded before the trial court in convicting former cop R K Sharma and three others because apart from the call records, they had conclusively established how close Sharma was to Shri Bhagwan, Satya Prakash and Pradeep Sharma (the convicted killer)."This connection established the motive behind Shivani's killing and the court agreed with our submission that it was R K Sharma who plotted the crime," he explained.
The prosecution has maintained, in trial court and later in HC, that the killer Pradeep Sharma was co-accused Satya Prakash's nephew and cited a witness as evidence. It also claimed Satya Prakash in turn was a tenant in a property in Gurgaon that belonged to co-accused Shri Bhagwan Sharma. To show Shri Bhagwan's links with R K Sharma, the prosecution pointed out that Shri Bhagwan's father was also a police officer and had been R K Sharma's subordinate.
To complete the chain of circumstantial evidence, the prosecution had also alleged that Satya Prakash knew R K Sharma independently too since the senior police officer had in1996 inaugurated a portion of a school at a village where Satya Prakash was the "sarpanch". A plaque declaring the inauguration and the guests present was also submitted before the court.
Advocate Manisha Sharma, who assisted Saxena as a prosecutor during the trial, maintained there is enough evidence to link killer Pradeep to R K Sharma, independent of the call records that the HC had found to be fabricated. "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. But the prosecution should have highlighted that both Pradeep and Ram Phal are neighbours, so the instrument could have easily been accessed by Pradeep," the ex-prosecutor said.
Saxena and Sharma also argue that the tampering of call records might well be "technical glitches" in the computer from which printouts were taken. "This point of view was not brought out properly before the HC. There is a remote possibility of the accused tampering with two independent call records. Technical faults were responsible for the discrepancies."