By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Tuesday issued notice to the Madhya Pradesh government on a plea by mobster Abu Salem's girlfriend Monica Bedi seeking transfer of the trial in a forgery case against her to Delhi or Mumbai.
A bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice R.V. Raveendran issued the notice to the state government on Bedi's petition, alleging that she was not getting a fair trial in the court of the Bhopal judicial magistrate.
The bench sought the state's reply within eight weeks.
In her petition Bedi, undergoing trial for allegedly possessing a fake passport and travel documents, alleged that the trial court at Bhopal was heavily influenced by the state's prosecution wing, which was bent upon getting her convicted despite her innocence.
She said she was being prosecuted for allegedly possessing a fake passport despite the fact that she never had one and even police never recovered any fake passport from her.
All that the police have as evidence against her is an application form, purportedly seeking a passport for her and seized by police from Bhopal's passport office, Bedi said.
She added that the application form was neither filled by her nor had her signature on it. Yet the prosecution insists that it was hers as it had her photograph affixed on it.
Bedi said that to fabricate false evidence against her, the state police have made main accused Abdul Jalil an approver in the case despite his links with underworld dons and Jammu and Kashmir militants. The police have made him approver with the promise of leniency in sentence for him.
She said the police have got Jalil to depose in the court that he had seen her visiting the passport office to apply for the passport.
Levelling a serious allegation against the Bhopal judicial magistrate, Bedi said the judge framed charges against her without even listening to her defence arguments, but falsely noted in the court documents that the arguments were heard.
She said the court had even denied her access to documents on which police were prosecuting her.
Bedi, a former Bollywood starlet, was arrested along with Abu Salem at a Lisbon shopping mall Sep 18, 2002 following an Interpol red corner notice issued at the behest of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The two were extradited to India Nov 11, 2005 – 12 years after Salem allegedly masterminded the terror blasts in India's financial capital Mumbai.
Apart from the Mumbai blast case, the 36-year-old mobster is also wanted in 54 cases ranging from murder to extortion. Bedi has several cases of forgery registered against her in Bhopal and Hyderabad.