"The middle class has been steadily fed with images of its importance in a rising India.... To be confronted (now) with the yawning gap between its claim to power and the reality of its powerlessness is a surefire recipe for release of pent-up rage."
Sudhir Kakar Author and Psychoanalyst
"Rang de Basanti captures ordinary people’s outrage at an inept polity, and the tremendous middle-class response to the Jessica case is part of that same spirit.If there’s no justice for Jessica, what hope is there for ordinary folk?"
Khushboo, Actress
"I heard a senior police officer was present at that party where Jessica Lall was killed and he did the disappearing trick. I hope this sends out a message to top cops in Mumbai who attend Page Three parties, filmi parties, builders’ parties."
Julio Ribeiro, Former Bombay police commissioner and Punjab DGP
***
Who Came To Dinner
Y.S. Dadwal, Jt Commissioner of Police, New Delhi
Rajiv Talwar, senior IAS officer
Andaleeb Sehgal, (of Volckergate fame)
Steven Seagal, Hollywood star
Rohit Bal
Tarun Tahiliani
Rina Dhaka
***
Six years and eleven months after model Jessica Lall was shot dead point blank at an upscale south Delhi bar, the case refuses to die. What initially appeared to be an open-and-shut case against the main accused, Manu Sharma, son of Haryana minister Venod Sharma, turned into a scandalous derailment of justice after he and eight others were acquitted by additional sessions judge (ASJ) S.L. Bhayana on February 21.
The cold-blooded murder, committed in the illegal but thriving Tamarind Court bar owned by socialite Bina Ramani, in the presence of more than 100 people, had all the ingredients of a potboiler. But nobody actually thought that life would imitate Bollywood in such a blatant manner. Rich and influential accused, witnesses being bought off, conniving cops, manipulation of evidence, and all of that capped by a controversial judgement. All the accused walked away free, with their swagger intact. What’s more, the file regarding Bhayana’s promotion was cleared a day after the judgement, amid whispers that this was more than just a coincidence. And the next day, Manu Sharma and family were making a thanksgiving trip to Vaishno Devi.
The judgement generated an unprecedented, and probably unexpected, outcry across the country, forcing the police to belatedly announce that they would appeal against it.
As uncomfortable questions were raised regarding shoddy investigation and collusion of police officers with the accused, it was time for dirty linen to be washed in public. Each police official who had been involved with the investigation passed the buck to others. But their arguments were not convincing, because in high-profile cases like this one, every development, however minute, is followed by senior officials.
That was how, as long ago as May 2000, the then DCP (south Delhi) Sudhir Yadav had come to suspect that things were going wrong and that evidence was being tampered with. He wrote to his senior, then joint commissioner, Amod Kanth, who asked police commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma to look into the matter. The then joint commissioner (crime) K.K. Paul, who is now commissioner of police, probed the matter and recommended the registration of a separate case under section 201 of the Indian Penal Code—causing disappearance of evidence, or giving false information to screen the offender. "There obviously has been a collusion between the accused and certain officials which is to be investigated," he wrote in an internal report to Ajai Raj Sharma. But Ajai Raj in his wisdom decided to overlook the report, saying that it would adversely affect the case in court, where the prosecution’s presentation was just unfolding.
However, when the public outcry over the acquittals began, senior police officers washed their hands of the responsibility for the case going awry. Their fingers were pointed at investigating officer (IO) Surender Kumar Sharma, then SHO of Mehrauli police station, in whose area of jurisdiction the murder took place. But the police may not find it that easy to make the IO the fall guy. "If there was even an iota of doubt about his integrity, why did Paul, as commissioner, give him another plum posting as SHO Hauz Khas?" asked a senior official at police headquarters.
In retrospect, however, all police officials do agree that it would have been better if they had taken cognisance of Paul’s report. At least they would have been able to save face in court, and not given ASJ Bhayana all the ammunition he needed to declare: "The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt against any of the accused persons." In fact, the judge goes even further, saying several times in the controversial 178-page judgement that the prosecution tried to "falsely implicate the accused".
Ironically, Paul, in his present capacity as police commissioner, has been instructed by the Delhi High Court, acting suo motu in the wake of the public outcry, to take the very action that he had once recommended. "The court has asked me to conduct an inquiry to pinpoint lapses in investigation and also to fix responsibility. Though it is not being done under section 201, it will largely cover all the aspects," Paul told Outlook. He has to give a status report before March 24 and an inquiry report by April 19.
He also promised to provide protection to witnesses in the event of a retrial or reinvestigation of the case. "Some of the Delhi-based witnesses, like Bina Ramani, had been provided security by the police. We will do it again if need be. But then there are allurements, and not just threats of physical harm, that the police cannot prevent," he said. On the question of filing an appeal against the judgement in the high court, Paul said it would be done as quickly as possible. The police are waiting, he said, for a report from director of prosecution M.K. Sharma, who is preparing the grounds for an appeal.
But if the police take too long to file an appeal, it could prove counter-productive for the case. "It is only giving time to Manu Sharma to prepare himself, and probably even flee the country," says Sabrina Lall, Jessica’s irate sister. After days of speculation about Sharma’s whereabouts, including rumours that he had already left the country, he surfaced through a letter to the press earlier this week. The letter, signed with his official name Sidhartha Vashishta, announced that he was very much around, and was busy at "his sugar mill in Patiala as cane-crushing season is at its peak". The letter was circulated by family friend and Congress worker, Sunil Parti. However, eminent criminal lawyer Ramesh Gupta said that legally, Manu Sharma was now a free man, having been acquitted by the court, and could travel abroad without restrictions. Only the court could order seizure of his passport or prevent him from leaving the country, he pointed out.
Sabrina, cynical after her long and hard battle for justice for her sister, which has so far been a losing proposition, said she had been shocked when she first saw witnesses turning hostile. Initially, she says she was trusting enough to believe Karan Rajput, a key witness, when he assured her he would tell the truth in court despite having taken money from the other side. Rajput, an uncle of Jitender Raj, an employee of Ramani, had initially told the police that he had seen Manu Sharma firing at Jessica. But in court, he changed his stand and said that he had not seen Jessica being hit, maintaining, in fact, that he had not been present at the scene at all.
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Sabrina says, before this volte face, Rajput was in regular touch with her. "We used to laugh about it. He used to come and ask me his worth. How much should I take, he would ask. I don’t know how much he finally took, but he used to complain that Shayan Munshi was getting a crore," says Sabrina. Munshi, then a struggling model and actor, was standing next to Jessica when she was shot, and it was on basis of his statement that the FIR was registered. "Even before he appeared in the court, we had an inkling that he had been approached. I tried to contact him several times. In fact, on one of my business trips to Calcutta, I even tried to reach him at his house, but he was not available. He had just disappeared," says Sabrina.
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This was corroborated by a police officer involved with the investigations. "We got the information that Shayan Munshi had been paid off before he came to give evidence in court. But we just could not trace him," he said. Munshi was finally seen only once in court, making an entry from the judge’s chamber, accompanied by half-a-dozen lawyers, and wearing the black and white clothes of a lawyer, presumably to avoid attracting too much notice.
"I recall it so vividly. He just came and said, in kind of broken, accented Hindi that he would depose in English since he did not know Hindi," says Sabrina. Munshi was, in fact, laying the ground for disowning his eyewitness statement to the police, in which he had identified Manu, by description, as Jessica’s killer. He told the court that he had made his statement in English and that he did not know how it had been turned into Hindi, and that he had signed it in good faith. Of course, language ceased to be a problem for Munshi when he went on to act in a Hindi film, Jhankaar Beats. After the judgement, his only comment was that the Jessica incident had happened a long time ago and that he had "moved on".
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Even though Rajput, and another key witness, electrician Shiv Dass, also turned hostile, it was Munshi’s statement in court that turned the case on its head. He introduced the false notion that two guns had been fired during Jessica’s murder, which was supported by a dubious ballistic report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Chandigarh. This business of two guns is now known to be based on tampered evidence. Fingers have been pointed at the police for switching bullet shells. Investigators are now questioning the integrity of ballistic expert Roop Singh at the CFSL, who was close to retirement when the evidence was sent to him for forensic investigation. Outlook tried to trace Roop Singh, but he remained elusive. Amod Kanth, now director general of police, Arunachal Pradesh, attempts to explain what went wrong: "Somebody using money power could have manipulated the two empty shells, either before or after they were sent for forensic examination."
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As Outlook talked to the police officials involved in the investigation of the case, and to legal experts, it became clear that while there had been lapses in investigation and also in the prosecution of the case, significant circumstantial evidence had been overlooked by the judge. Here are some: .
- Bhayana did not question why Manu failed to produce the .22 Italian-made Beretta pistol registered in his name, the weapon with which he had been accused of killing Jessica. His failure to produce the weapon or to explain what happened to it was a serious bit of circumstance against him.
- The judge wrote that the prosecution failed to establish the connection of the accused with the crime. However, the presence of four of the accused, Manu Sharma, Vikas Yadav (son of former MP and UP don D.P. Yadav), Tony Gill and Alok Khanna, at the party and their fleeing the scene of crime was surely circumstantial evidence.
- The judge also ignored the fact that Manu Sharma went into hiding after the incident. The police had announced Manu’s name as the prime accused on May 2, 1999—two days after the crime—and it had made headlines everywhere. But Manu surrendered only four days later.
- The judge also ignored the abandoning, on the scene of the crime, of the black Tata Safari used by Manu Sharma, later collected by Vikas Yadav. The vehicle was registered in the name of Piccadily Agro Industries, which is owned by Manu’s father, Venod Sharma.
- According to the judgement, calls made from one phone to another did not establish guilt of the accused. But in the opinion of legal experts, the police record of calls made from D.P Yadav’s phone to Manu’s house and calls made from Manu’s mobile to the other accused and vice versa, constituted damning evidence. The police also established that early morning calls from one number to another were rare, but became the norm immediately after the murder.
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Despite the botched investigation, there is clearly scope for the case to be salvaged through reinvestigation and retrial. Since the case has become such an emotive one, people across the country will be following it closely. And with them as watchdog, Jessica may get justice—at last.
By Bhavna Vij-Aurora with Payal Kapadia, S. Anand and Prayaag Akbar
