By IANS,
New Delhi : After many twists and turns, the judgement in the nine-year-old BMW hit-and-run case is likely Tuesday. Sanjeev Nanda, son of arms dealer Suresh Nanda, is accused of mowing down six people under his car here and the prosecution has demanded life imprisonment for him.
Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar Aug 26 reserved order for pronouncement of judgement on Sep 2 after hearing the final arguments from the prosecution and defence.
According to the prosecution, Nanda mowed down six people, including three policemen, with his BMW car on Jan 10, 1999, in Lodhi Colony in south Delhi.
However, legal experts feel that the Delhi High Court ruling debarring R.K. Anand and I.U. Khan, who were the lawyers in the case, from practising for four months after finding them guilty of trying to bribe key witness Sunil Kulkarni, can have a bearing on the lower court ruling.
The division bench had debarred Anand, the defence lawyer, and Khan, the special public prosecutor, from practising and slapped them with a fine of Rs.2,000 each after establishing the authenticity of a sting operation conducted by the news channel NDTV.
“The high court ruling will definitely have an impact on the lower court judgement. The case can take a new turn,” said a senior lawyer wishing anonymity.
During the arguments, the prosecution has alleged that Nanda was in an inebriated state at the time of the accident.
“Nanda was in an inebriated condition. His blood alcohol content level was 115 mg/dl on the afternoon of the day of incident,” public prosecutor Rajeev Mohan had told the court.
Mohan said the accused had the knowledge that his action was likely to cause death.
The defence concluded its final arguments on Aug 20.
The prosecution has charged Nanda and co-accused Manik Kapoor under section 304 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), dealing with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, which prescribe life imprisonment as maximum punishment.
The defence has maintained that it is at best a case of simple accident under IPC section 304A (causing death by negligence), which prescribes a maximum of two years’ jail term. They say the accused had no intention whatsoever to kill.
Defence counsel Prem Kumar said it was a simple accident as the accused did not intend to kill and that while every accident is unfortunate, court decisions cannot be guided by emotions.
The prosecution has refuted the contention of the other co-accused – Rajeev Gupta, Bhola Nath and Shyam Singh, who had helped to clean the car after the accident – that they did not cause destruction of evidence as they were not aware of the incident.
While Nanda and Kapoor are booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Gupta and two others are accused of destroying evidence.
Those killed in the accident were Mehdi Hasan, Nazir and Ghulam and three constables Rajan Kumar, Ram Raj and Perulal.