Witnesses fail to appear in Jessica murder case

new delhi: in view of prosecution failing to produce the witnesses in the jessica lal murder case, a city court on thursday directed it to issue fresh summons to them. additional sessions judge r l chugh, who is conducting day-to-day hearing in the case after the delhi high court's direction to complete the trial within four months, asked the prosecution to produce before it three witnesses, sumitabh bhatnagar, sunil sahani and undilip singh, on september 20.prosecution informed the court that these witnesses could not be brought to court as they failed to make contact with them. bhatanagar and sahani were working with soft drink firm coca cola when the incident had occurred in 1999 but now they have left the job with the company and their addresses were not known, they said. singh is at present staying in ahmedabad. apart from these three witnesses, the court had on wednesday issued summons to mahavir singh, gurnam singh, surender singh and narain chopra, who are likely to be produced on friday. in view of completing the trial expeditiously, the court had made it clear that personal exemption of accused be avoided. the court, till now, has already examined eight witnesses including three eye-witnesses who had turned hostile. only one witness, malani ramani, has favoured prosecution claim that the model was shot dead by manu, son of former union minister vinod sharma, when she refused to serve him liquor. three eye-witnesses, shiv das yadav, working as an electrician at the tamarind restaurant, shyan munshi, a model, and karan rajput, had not supported the prosecution case.