A Delhi court has acquitted two men accused of murdering a 17-year-old girl inside a Mercedes near her house in southwest Delhi in December 2016 and has chastised the police and their witnesses for pursuing a false case. In his ruling on October 29, Additional Sessions Judge Navjeet Budhiraja ordered a departmental investigation into former SHO Rajbir Singh Lamba. According to the court, Lamba neglected to register the case at the earliest opportunity and instead filed a “fabricated” FIR “in collusion with the deceased victim’s family members and inspector Naresh Sangwan, who oversaw the inquiry at the latter stages.”
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The girl’s friend, her mother, and Dr. Sarabjeet Singh, senior scientific officer (Biology) of the forensic science laboratory (FSL) Rohini, were also charged with “malicious prosecution and false deposition” by the court. On December 12, 2016, the youngster left her house after informing her family she was heading to a friend’s birthday celebration. Later, the girl’s father and a friend went in search of her. According to the prosecution, the family saw the defendants in a Mercedes with the girl in the back seat.
According to the prosecution, the accused and the family got into a disagreement, and one of the males pulled out a gun and shot the girl inside the car. The two males were also accused of sexually assaulting the girl, according to the prosecution. The defendants were charged under sections 302 (murder), 363 (kidnapping), and 34 (common purpose) of the Indian Penal Code, section 77 of the JJ Act, and section 4 of the Pocso Act. Under section 30 of the Arms Act, one of the defendants driving the car was found guilty.
R S Malik, who attended on behalf of one of the defendants, said that the girl had shot herself. He said that her companion was possessive of her and had a disagreement with the accused and that the girl became irritated and shot herself as a result. “This is most common when the shot is fired from a close range.” This can happen whether the person shot is carrying the weapon and fires the shot at any part of his body, or if another person pulls the trigger by moving the weapon up close to the person to be shot’s body.”
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The court said there was enough evidence, such as the delay in filing the FIR, tainted eyewitness testimony, and medical and FSL reports that contradicted all eyewitnesses’ versions, “all of which suggest their involvement in setting up a false case against the accused persons in connivance with the deceased victim’s family members.” “I would be failing in my duty if I opted to close my eyes to the investigating agency’s grave wrongdoing, which has behaved maliciously by transforming a case of suicide into one of culpable homicide amounting to murder and unjustly incriminating the accused people,” the ruling stated.
