Thu, Mar 20 09:03 PM
New Delhi, Mar 20 (PTI) The desperate attempt of IPS officer R K Sharma to project Shivani Bhatnagar's husband as the plotter of her murder did not succeed as a Delhi court held that it was he who hatched the conspiracy. A polygraph test conducted on the victim's husband with an intention to shift blame on him did not help the defence, the court concluded.
The court said the IPS officer wanted to walk out of his "intimate" relationship with the scribe, agreeing the prosecution's plea on the motive behind the murder. "The plea that the complainant (Shivani's husband) had a stronger motive than accused R K Sharma to kill Shivani, I am unable to agree with," Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri said in the judgement.
"Nowhere it is established that it was within the knowledge of complainant that his wife was having intimate relations what to say of illicit relationship," the court said in its 115-page judgement. It rather found substance in the prosecution claim that it was Sharma who had intimate relations with the victim and her husband was even unaware of it.
Sharma, who used to chat with Shivani over phone even during odd hours, "fostered grudge" against her and wanted to finish her, the court noted. The court, however, rejected the prosecution claims that Sharma got apprehensive after the scribe threatened to expose him over the alleged delivery of classified documents to her.
"There remains no doubt that the documents were accessible to several persons apart from the accused R K Sharma. Moreover, no one claimed to have seen said accused delivering those documents to the deceased," the judge said.
The court also brushed aside Sharma's contention that the victim was a family friend saying that nothing was brought on record they visited each other's houses along with their family members. PTI.
