The Delhi police on Wednesday challenged the acquittal of former Haryana inspector-general (prisons) R.K. Sharma, in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case by the Delhi high court three months ago meeting the mandatory deadline of three months to file the appeal.
The high court had acquitted Sharma in a judgment passed on October 10, 2011 holding that the prosecution had failed to establish Sharma’s link with key accused Pradeep Kumar, who actually committed the murder at her flat in east Delhi in February, 1997. The HC had also acquitted two other co-accused, Satya Prakash Sharma and Shri Bhagwan, and upheld the conviction of only Pradeep Kumar.
The trial court had convicted them all with life imprisonment with finding Sharma as hatching the conspiracy and executing it through the three co-accused as his henchmen.
Assailing the high court verdict as not tenable on the face of certain crucial evidence, mainly the telephone records, the Police in its appeal said “the prosecution had established through cogent evidence that accused Ravi Kant Sharma, Shri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash and Ved Prakash Sharma (a fifth accused) hatched a criminal conspiracy to kill Shivani Bhatnagar. Accused Pradeep Sharma joined later and committed the actual murder.”
In order to establish the chain of conspiracy among the accused, the police cited the call record with details of several calls made on mobile phone — 9811008825 — belonging to Shri Bhagwan, the main henchman of the senior IPS officer, in due course of executing the conspiracy.
However, the HC had said that the calls made by Pradeep Sharma from various landline phones on the said mobile number of Shri Bhagwan were not confirmed by a “mirror (details of data” nor by entry in the call records of the said numbers,” the police said adding that such conclusion was not tenable because prior to 1999-2000 there was no facilities for producing details of call records on “mirror” and there was no provision of recording details of local calls as the facility was limited to STD calls. But the technology available at that time had confirmed the receiving of several calls on Bhagwan’s number from some landline phones.