By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Wednesday halted the murder trial of Ujjain professor H.S. Sabharwal in a Madhya Pradesh court on a petition by his son seeking its transfer to Delhi alleging that it was not being conducted fairly.
A bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice D.K. Jain issued the notice to the Madhya Pradesh government on a petition by the professor's son Himanshu Sabharwal.
After hearing the petitioner's counsel, the bench halted the trial and issued notice to the state government, wondering, "if they had made mockery of the justice".
In his petition, Himanshu expressed the apprehension that he would not get justice in the state as the trial was being conducted to "give a clean chit to the accused persons" who happen to be youth wing leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Professor Sabharwal, a 61-year-old teacher at Ujjain's Government Madhav Inter College, was badly beaten allegedly by a group of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leaders during the student union election on Aug 28 last year.
Himanshu told the court that his father succumbed to his injuries right there in the college in front of over 70 policemen, including officers of the rank of assistant superintendent of police and a local magistrate, deployed in the college on poll duty.
He said the police officers turned a blind eye to the incident and even refused to promptly register a case of murder after his father died of the beatings.
Accusing the policemen of carrying out a shoddy probe into the case, Himanshu alleged that the trial was not being conducted fairly in the state.
Despite several of the crucial witnesses retracting from their original statements, he said the Ujjain trial court had refused to declare them hostile, which would have an adverse effect on the trial.
Himanshu's counsel pointed out several other lacunae in the ongoing trial, prompting the court to issue notice to the state government.