By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Thursday issued notices to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Vijay Shankar and others on a petition accusing them of plotting the murder of a key witness in the case relating to the serial killings of children and young women of Nithari village in Noida.
A bench of Justice B.N. Agarwal and Justice P.P. Naolekar issued the notices on the petition by the widow of Nithari case witness Jatin Sarkar, who was drowned in a river in Murshidabad in West Bengal Sep 1.
In her petition, Sarkar’s widow Bandana accused Shankar, Superintendent of Police S.J.M. Gilnai and Deputy Superintendent of Noida police Dinesh Yadav of hatching the conspiracy to eliminate her husband.
Besides the three officers, the apex court also issued notices to the union home ministry and the chief secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Sarkar’s daughter Pinki was one of the victims of the Nithari serial killings and Sarkar had been actively pursuing the case against the accused, Noida-based businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic aide Surendra Kohli.
Bandana Sarkar said her husband was instrumental in unearthing Pandher’s confessional statements to the Noida police, in which he had confessed to his role in the rape and killings of the children and young women.
The CBI, however, with an aim to save Pandher from the gallows, had not produced those documents before the Ghaziabad court that is trying the case, she alleged.
Bandana Sarkar said her husband had brought Pandher’s confessional statements to the court’s notice, prompting it to frame charges of rape and murder against him, after the CBI refrained from booking him on those charges.
She said her husband was receiving threats from CBI officials for actively pursuing the case.
She said he even lodged a complaint at a police station in Ghaziabad against the three police officials, apprehending that they might eliminate him.
She added that even her son Sonu in Murshidabad got repeated telephone calls in August 2007 from CBI officials in Delhi, asking him to dissuade his father from pursuing the case and not to appear before the Ghaziabad court on the next date of hearing.