By IANS
New Delhi : Former coal minister Shibu Soren had been wrongly convicted in the 1994 murder of his private secretary because the charges slapped on him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were "false", his counsel told the Delhi High Court Thursday.
Appearing before a bench headed by Justice R.S. Sodhi, Senior Counsel D.K.Mathur said the DNA of the secretary, Sashinath Jha, did not match that of his mother and brother despite the CBI having sent the samples to the forensic laboratory three times.
The CBI had retrieved the skeleton of Jha from a pit of a house in Piska Nagri near Ranchi, in Jharkhand.
Even though the DNA tests were considered to be clinching evidence, the trial court judge wrongly relied on the skull superimposition test, he said, adding that the evidence derived from that test could not be taken as clinching.
He said the CBI was also unable to prove that Jha was abducted from Dhaula Kuan in Delhi and taken to Bihar at the behest of Soren.
The hearing continues Monday.
Soren is currently lodged in a Jharkhand jail undergoing trial there for his role in a 1975 mass murder in the state. He had allegedly led a mob that attacked the Muslim-dominated Chirudih village in Jamtara district in a campaign to drive away "outsiders", a term used to describe non-tribals. Ten people including nine Muslims were killed in the attack.
Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Kedia had convicted Soren in November last year for conspiring to abduct Jha and for his murder.
Jha was allegedly murdered for demanding a cut from money which the JMM leaders had reportedly received from the Congress party in bribes for supporting the P.V. Narasimha Rao government during a no-trust motion in parliament in July 1993.
Soren has challenged his conviction on the grounds that the court failed to appreciate the fact that the DNA tests on the skeleton recovered by the CBI could not establish that it was Jha's.
The 62-year-old leader from Jharkhand was forced to quit as coal minister in the Manmohan Singh government after his conviction.