Court demands evidence on Soren secretary’s murder

By IANS

New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Thursday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to prove that the body exhumed from a village near Ranchi was that of Shashinath Jha, for whose murder former union coal minister Shibu Soren was sentenced to life imprisonment.


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Taking the submission of defence that the DNA sample of the body did not match with those of Jha's relatives, a division bench of Justice R.S. Sodhi and Justice H.R. Malhotra here asked the investigating agency to justify that the body belonged to Jha, Soren's private secretary.

Senior counsel D.K. Mathur appearing for Soren submitted that the DNA of Jha's mother and brother did not match with the body, which CBI claimed to be of Jha. The trial court had convicted Soren on the basis of skull superimposition method, which is not conclusive.

"To keep the accused (Soren) behind the bars, you come with evidence. There should be proper links between all incidents and links among witnesses," said the bench.

Jha was murdered as he had allegedly demanded a cut from the bribe money allegedly received by leaders of Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) from the ruling Congress party for supporting the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in a no-trust motion in parliament in 1993.

Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Kedia had convicted Soren Nov 28, 2006 for conspiring to abduct Jha on May 22, 1994 from Dhaula Kuan in south Delhi and later killing him in a village near the Jharkhand capital.

Soren in a petition had challenged the conviction on the grounds that the court failed to appreciate the fact that DNA tests on the skeleton recovered by the CBI could not establish that it was of Jha.

Soren's four associates had also been awarded life imprisonment by the court.

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