New Delhi: The prosecution in the Jessica Lall murder case on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that there was no clinching evidence against socialite Bina Ramani on destruction of evidence and contended that the ballistic report of the experts was manipulated to favour accused Manu Sharma.
Replying to a query by a Division Bench of Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin that despite the testimony of two witnesses regarding the removal of blood stains from the spot as to why Bina was not made an accused in the case, the cousel for Delhi police Mukta Gupta said both the witnesses had given statements differently.
"Witness Madan Kumar had stated that he had removed the blood stains from the spot at the instance of Bina Ramani.
However, another witness, Suresh Chand, said that he had cleaned up the place after he was asked by a male guest in the party to remove the stains," she said.
Following her submission, the Bench wanted to know the number of cases filed against Bina after the incident. The counsel said only one case was registered against her under the Excise Act for selling liquor without a licence.
"Bina, her husband George Mailhot and daughter Malini have been convicted by a city court," she said.
Justice Sodhi noted at this point "police has made her as witness intelligently. She is the star witness and prosecution depends completely on her statement. Without her the prosecution has no case virtually".
The court also wanted to know from the police that whether any case was registered against the people who visited the restaurant and had drinks at a public place.
"Having liquor in the public place is an offence under the law and why no case was registered against those persons including the then Joint Commissioner of Police who had liquor over there?," the court asked.
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The prosecution also submitted before the Bench should ignore the ballistic reports given by the experts as that was manipulated to favour prime accused Manu Sharma.
The counsel said the first ballistic report prepared by an expert K K Jha stated that two empty catridges of .22 bore mark obtained from the spot of occurrence did not match with each other.
"Prosecution has found overwriting in several places in the report by Roop Singh, who was Jha's senior in the office and Singh had not testified in the trial court," Gupta argued seeking Bench's direction to record his statement at this appeal stage.
She also said the second report was submitted by the expert P S Minocha from Jaipur, which said it was difficult to reach to any conclusion until the catridges were fired from
the pistol used in the crime.
" As the weapon has not been recovered yet by the investigating agency, the question of reliability on such report does not arise," she added. PTI PNM VSC
She contended that the two empty catridges obtained from the spot, the led recovered from the scull of the deceased and a live catridge found in Tata Safari car were of .22 bore of mark C and there are evidence that Manu had purchased 25 catridges of same .22 bore from a Gun house in Karnal, Haryana.
"All these facts establish that Manu was the person who had indeed killed Jessica," she argued. Meanwhile the counsel argued that co-accused Vikas Yadav had driven back Manu's Tata Safari car from the place of occurance, therefore he was tried for destruction of evidence in the case.
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