Preeti Jain challenges court’s verdict on murder plot in HC

MUMBAI: Almost a month after aspiring actor Preeti Jain was convicted for conspiring to kill filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, she has approached the Bombay high court to challenge the verdict. Jain, whose bail granted by the trial court expires on May 26, has also filed a plea urging the HC to suspend her three-year jail term and release her on regular bail. The appeal as well as the bail application is scheduled to come up for hearing before the vacation bench of Justice Makarand Karnik on Monday.

On April 28, a trial court had held Jain and two others guilty of conspiring to kill Bhandarkar and had sentenced them to three years imprisonment. The court had suspended her sentence for four weeks and granted her bail so that she could appeal against her conviction in the high court. The case dates back to July 2004, when Jain, then a model and aspiring actor, had lodged a complaint against Bhandarkar accusing him of raping her 16 times since 1999. She had alleged that Bhandarkar, under the pretext of giving her a lead role in his films, had forced himself on her.

Bhandarkar had denied the allegations and the Supreme Court had quashed the rape case against him in 2012. Meanwhile, in 2005 Jain was arrested for conspiring to kill the film director. The police claimed that the plot came to light when she approached the Akhil Bharatiya Sena to recover Rs 40,000 that she had allegedly paid to one

Naresh Pardeshi

to eliminate Bhandarkar. The film maker was one of the 51 witnesses that the prosecution had produced before the trial court.

In her appeal, Jain claimed that the trial court had erred in convicting her.