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Fresh probe sought into murder of Bhopal RTI activist

By IANS,

Mumbai : The family of slain Right to Information (RTI) activist Shehla Masood Thursday demanded a fresh probe into her cold-blooded killing at her house in Bhopal, madhya Pradesh.

They said there were several gaps and unanswered questions in the probe conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) so far.

Majeed Memon, the Bhopal-based family’s lawyer here, said there were gaps and unanswered questions in the investigation.

Masood was shot dead in her car at her house in Bhopal Aug 16 last year as she was leaving for a meeting of India Against Corruption.

“The central character in the entire matter, Dhruv Narain Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator from Madhya Pradesh, has been left out of the purview of the probe by the police so far,” Memon told reporters here.

Memon, a well-known criminal lawyer and vice-president of the Nationalist Congress Party, was accompanied by Shehla’s father Masood Sultan, brother Rajil and family lawyer Siraj Ali.

Pointing out that the main accused, Zaheda Parvez had claimed that if the legislator was given a clean chit by the CBI, she too should be given a clean chit, Memon said the polygraph test reports of Singh had not been filed in the court.

Even the call records of Masood’s number, which could have thrown light on the case, had not been filed before the court, he said.

“It seems that the CBI has investigated the case with a view to protect Singh, who was the central character in the entire episode. But he was not even listed as a witness in the charge sheet,” Memon said.

The lawyer said he would seek the case’s trial to be conducted in Bhopal and not Indore.

“It is strange that she was killed in Bhopal and the trial is being conducted in a different city, which has no territorial jurisdiction over the issue,” he said.

Memon also said that even the records placed before the court did not seem to reflect the entire truth.

“It is quite evident that certain vital aspects are being suppressed, twisted and thwarted,” he said.

More than 145 witnesses have been named in the CBI charge sheet.