Shivani murder case: police seek dismissal of Sharma's appeal

NEW DELHI: Seeking dismissal of the appeal by former senior police officer R K Sharma against his conviction for having journalist Shivani Bhatnagar killed in 1999, the city police today told the Delhi High Court that he had influenced the witnesses and tampered with the evidence to extricate him from the sensational murder case.

Commencing the prosecution's argument before a division bench of Justice B D Ahmed and Justice Manmohan Singh, Standing Counsel (Criminal) Pawan Sharma countered the defence contention that there were several missing links, including the call record, in the chain of circumstances.

"The accused was holding a high position and had influenced the witnesses, as a result which 43 prosecution witnesses had turned hostile in the case," counsel Sharma argued.

R K Sharma is serving life imprisonment after his conviction in the case.

Refuting the defence argument that the call record was tampered with by the police to implicate him, the lawyer submitted the accused was posted in the Prime Minister's Office and if any call record was tampered with at all, it was done by Sharma.

The lawyer offered to submit the call record to the bench for its scrutiny, saying if the bench detected any tampering of the call records by the police, it can order retrial of the case.

At this, the court asked for the call record for its scrutiny on Monday before further arguement.

Earlier, R K Sharma's counsel had concluded his arguments, seeking to pick lacunae in the transcript of the mobile phone calls between his client and other accomplices to substatntiate his allegation that the police had fabricated call records.