NEW DELHI, 11 August — A court in Haryana yesterday rejected a fresh bail plea from a top police officer accused of masterminding a journalist’s murder three and a half years ago. Ravi Kant Sharma, inspector general of prisons in Haryana, has been untraceable since Aug. 2, when a Delhi Police team knocked at his door in Panchkula, near Chandigarh, to question him on the January 1999 murder of Shivani Bhatnagar.
A Panchkula court rejected Sharma’s plea for transitory bail, which he applied for after a lower court dismissed his application for interim bail Monday. His counsel might now approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Delhi Police continued to raid several places yesterday in search of Sharma, who once worked at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). It was during the PMO stint that Sharma grew close to Shivani, a special correspondent with The Indian Express. Shivani was strangled with a wire and stabbed with kitchen knives.
Police have arrested two men — Shri Bhagwan and Pradeep — for the murder. They have reportedly told interrogators that Shivani was blackmailing Sharma.
They said she had threatened to charge him with rape if he did not leave his wife and two daughters to marry her. The prosecution lawyers told the Panchkula court yesterday that they had enough evidence to prove that Sharma conspired the murder.
Police said they had records of calls Shri Bhagwan made to Sharma at Pune soon after the murder. They also said they could prove that Sharma was close to Shivani through records of frequent telephonic conversation between the two.
“As a senior police officer, he should cooperate with the police in the investigations,” an officer here said. Police said Sharma called Shivani several times when she was in London for a journalism course and he was posted in Bombay. The journalist too had called Sharma many times during that period, they added. Sharma’s wife Madhu said “someone who wants to save himself” was trying to frame her husband. She has accused the Delhi Police and Home Ministry of being behind the conspiracy.
Madhu Sharma has demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe.
“Hang my husband if he is found guilty, but please do not make him a scapegoat,” she said at a press conference in Chandigarh Thursday.
However, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan Friday said that only the Home Ministry would decide whether the journalist’s murder case should be handed to the CBI).
“The CBI is entrusted with special crime investigation, cases related to national security and cases that affect the nation. If the agency is given many cases, it is accused of delaying the case,” Mahajan said. A day earlier, Delhi Police had announced a reward of 50,000 rupees for anyone who found Sharma and his alleged accomplice Satyaprakash, against whom non-bailable warrants of arrest have been issued. Sharma’s picture has been flashed at all airports to prevent him from leaving the country.
