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More delays in tandoor murder case

T L Garg in New Delhi

The Delhi high court on Monday deferred its verdict on a plea that a celebrated murder trial be shifted back to the judge who had originally heard the case.

Judge R C Chopra had on April 17 allowed the plea of Sushil Sharma, prime accused in the tandoor murder case, that the trial continue in the court of Additions Sessions Judge G P Thareja.

Sharma, former president of the Delhi unit of the Indian Youth Congress, is accused of murdering his wife Naina Sahani and attempting to dispose of the body by hacking it into pieces and burning them in a tandoor at the Ashok Yatri Nivas hotel in the heart of the city in July 1995.

Thareja had been hearing the case till he was shifted to a civil court in what was described as a routine transfer.

The Delhi administration had sought the reversal of the order and urged that Additional Sessions Judge V K Jain, who had been posted in Thareja's place, hear the case.

"The interests of justice and the principles of fair trial demand that the case be made over to Judge G P Thareja so that the petitioner has no misgivings about the fairness of the trial," Judge Chopra had ruled on April 17.

In seeking the transfer, Sharma's counsel Jayant Sud had pleaded that the hearing was nearing the end and that only one prosecution witness remained to be examined.

Two policemen, Abdul Nazir Kunju, and Chanderpal, while on patrolling duty outside the Ashok Yatri Niwas hotel on July 2, 1995, had noticed a thick cloud of smoke emitting from the hotel. When they scaled the boundary wall, they found something burning in the tandoor of an open-air restaurant in the hotel premises.

Inquiries revealed that Sharma and some others were trying to dispose of a human body.

Police arrested the restaurant manager, Keshav. Sharma, who was present at the time, managed to escape. He was arrested in Bangalore eight days later.

Indo-Asian News Service

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