Inspite of the Delhi High Court setting a positive example by instigating an enquiry against all the 32 witnesses who had turned hostile during the Jessica Lall murder trail – we still have prime witnesses backing off from their initial statements in on-going murder trials leaving family members of the dead victims in deeper predicament.
A fifth witness to the killing of Ujjain college teacher HS Sabharwal, who was beaten up by a mob last year, turned hostile on Wednesday.
Government Madhav College peon Naval Kishore not only denied seeing the attackers but also told District Sessions Judge Anil Kumar Sharma that Principal LN Verma and ML Nath, a professor, were responsible for the death of the teacher.
Earlier, the college librarian Govind Kushwaha, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sanwar Patel, peon Komal Singh and sports teacher Manohar Dodia had refused to recognise the attackers.
Professor Sabharwal was attacked on August 26 last year by Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists over the cancellation of Madhav college student’s union elections. Initially since the local police failed to nab the culprits, the investigation was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which rounded up six activists of the ABVP’s activists.
The prosecution had based its case on circumstantial evidence and the statements of these seven witnesses, with most important one being that of Komal, the college peon.
On the other end, Prof. Sabharwal’s son Himanshu Sabharwal has filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking for CBI’s intervention in the case. He believes the on-going trail is nothing but a mockery and that the prosecution team is also siding with the guilty ones.
Though all the six accused are currently in police custody, this major setback could enable them to get out on bail and hamper the fragile case even further.
Comments
1 comment | Add your comment »
Guererra
Apr 7th, 2007 at 4:42 pm | #
The state of affairs in India is pathetically hopeless. Can any honest, law abiding citizen say why do we need this Police and judiciary. What we are witnessing in Professors case is another such example which ask every tax paying citizen, why do we have such a corrupt and inefficient police. We have seen them in Jessica, Priyadarshini, Prof Sabharwal, in Uttar Pradesh accepting bribes for encounter just to name a few. This country has fallen beyond repair. We only need a bloody revolution and if only a few like minded people, particulary youth have to collect and change the situation. There are only two set of people in our country – one corrupt and oppressive another is operessed and timid. So those who don’t agree with the system are left with no option, rather revolt. They should unite and make the change.