Just weeks after the prime accused in the 2013 murder of Navi Mumbai builder Sunil Lahoria were granted bail, the special public prosecutor has written to the govt’s law department pointing out that the judge conducting the trial is only taking cognisance of “bits & parts of the evidence which show minimum involvement of the accused.”
While Special Public Prosecutor Vilas Naik has urged the law department to challenge the bail, Lahoria’s son, Sandeep, has moved the Bombay HC seeking the transfer of trial to another judge, charging the current judge R R Vaishnav of “bias.”
The public prosecutor’s letter on Jan 17, three days after prime accused Suresh Bijlani & Anurag Garg were granted bail, says the judge has “conveniently failed & neglected to consider all the facts & circumstances of the case” while granting bail to the two accused.
Lahoria was shot at & then repeatedly stabbed on Feb 16, 2013 outside his office in Navi Mumbai. The murder had shaken Navi Mumbai & the extended builders’ community across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region as the CCTV footage of the murder went viral. The case was transferred to Mumbai Police Crime Branch for investigation, which arrested 13 accused, including a retired police officer.
The police invoked stringent provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the case.
It’s a rare instance that a public prosecutor has written such a stronglyworded letter.
The letter says that the judge ignored crucial evidence & important witnesses while granting bail to the accused. “There are entire volumes of charge sheet with multiple witnesses who clearly show the involvement of the accused, but those have not even been considered by the learned judge while deciding the bail,” the letter reads.
According to the prosecution, Bijlani & Garg were among those named by Lahoria in his “dying declaration” while he was being taken to a hospital after the attack. The public prosecutor’s letter says the judge has wrongly considered granting of bail to another accused “named in the dying declaration” to grant bail to Bijlani & Garg, though that accused hasn't been named in the dying declaration at all.
The letter adds that the judge seems to have focused only on the dying declaration, neglecting other evidence like conspiracy meetings, flow of the murder money & motive. It further alleges that the judge has wrongly considered “change of circumstances” to consider the bail applications despite Bombay HC rejecting Bijlani’s bail application in August last year, & the Supreme Court rejecting Garg’s bail application in March last year.
The court also wrongly stated, says the public prosecutor’s letter, that there was no major progress in the case, despite examination of 54 witnesses in over two years after the charges were framed against the accused. The letter also says that the judge isn’t allowing the prosecution to examine the witnesses in connection with the CCTV recording of the murder.
Lahoria’s son Sandeep has attached the public prosecutor’s letter with his application seeking the transfer of the case. Represented by Advocates Sanjiv Sawant & Himanshu Kode before the Bombay HC, the petition accuses the judge of “bias”.
A division bench of Justices B P Dharmadhikari & N R Borkar on Monday directed Sandeep to add names of the two accused – Bijlani & Garg – as respondents to the petition, & issued notices to all the parties while adjourning the case for the next week.
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