By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Wednesday reserved its order on an appeal filed by former coal minister Shibu Soren challenging his conviction by a subordinate court in a case related to the murder of his private secretary Sashinath Jha.
After the completion of the arguments of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) led by counsel Siddharth Luthra, a bench of Justices R.S. Sodhi and H.R. Malhotra said the order was reserved and will be pronounced later.
Senior counsel D.K. Mathur, appearing for Soren, had submitted that the veteran political leader had been wrongly convicted for the 1994 murder, arguing the CBI charges were false.
Mathur said the DNA profile of a skeleton that the CBI claims to be that of Jha did not match his mother and brother's DNA although the investigating agency had the samples analysed thrice.
The CBI had retrieved the skeleton from a pit in a house in Piska Nagri near Ranchi, Jharkhand.
Even though the DNA test was considered to be the clinching evidence, the trial court judge wrongly relied on the skull superimposition test, Soren's lawyer said, adding that the evidence derived from that test could not be taken as clinching.
Mathur said the CBI was also unable to prove that Jha had been abducted from Dhaula Kuan in Delhi and taken to Bihar at the behest of Soren, chief of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). In fact, the alleged abductors had been acquitted by the trial court.
He told the court that Soren had been wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment by the subordinate court on the basis of false charges.
However, Luthra argued that the CBI had proved that Soren was involved in a conspiracy to kill Jha.
Soren is currently lodged in a Jharkhand jail undergoing trial for his alleged role in a 1975 mass murder in the state.
Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Kedia had convicted Soren in November last year for conspiring to abduct and murder Jha.
Jha was allegedly murdered for demanding a cut from bribes that some JMM leaders had reportedly received from the Congress party for supporting the P.V. Narasimha Rao government during a no-trust motion in parliament in July 1993.
The 62-year-old leader from Jharkhand was forced to quit as coal minister in the Manmohan Singh government after his conviction.