By IANS,
Ghaziabad : A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court Friday extended by 14 days the judicial custody of Krishna, Raj Kumar Sharma and Vijay Mandal, accused of murdering Noida teenager Aarushi Talwar and the family’s domestic help Hemraj.
Raj Kumar’s counsel Sanjay Tyagi said the CBI was forcing his client to give false statements under torture and pressure.
“They have been under the illegal custody of the CBI since the beginning. Till date, the agency has neither produced any evidence nor made any recovery that could link them to the crime,” Tyagi said.
Intense drama prevailed in the courtroom when the policemen accompanying the three accused handcuffed Raj Kumar and Vijay Manual while taking them back from the witness box.
Upon this, Tyagi objected and asked the judge to intervene. “If this is their condition before the court, what would the CBI be doing away from court?” he said.
The judge rebuked the policemen and asked them to remove the handcuffs.
Countering the submissions, CBI lawyer R.K. Saini said the allegations levelled by the defence were frivolous and that the accused were never subjected to any kind of torture.
“All this is done to deflect the blame from them and hamper the investigations in the case,” the counsel said.
The court fixed the next date of hearing Aug 8.
Aarushi was found murdered in her parents’ upscale Jal Vayu Vihar apartment in Noida May 16. The Noida police immediately named Hemraj as the prime suspect but retracted when his body was found on the roof of the apartment the next day.
The police arrested Aarushi’s father Rajesh Talwar May 23, saying he killed his daughter in a fit of rage because he objected to her closeness with domestic help Hemraj. Talwar was released July 11 after 50 days of imprisonment, with the CBI saying there was no evidence to link him to the crime.
The CBI took over the case June 1 after a public hue and cry over the shoddy manner in which the Noida police had conducted the investigations.