Shivani Bhatnagar murder: Ravi Kant Sharma acquitted

Mangalore Today /PTI

New Delhi, Oct 12:  The Delhi High Court has acquitted former senior police officer Ravi Kant Sharma and two others in the 1999 murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar.

 

Ruling on the appeal of the convicts against a trial court order, the High Court judge said evidence was inconclusive and that the "benefit of doubt" in the case should go to them. The court has only upheld the conviction of one of those accused in the murder, a hitman Pradeep Sharma.

RK Sharma, a former IPS officer and who at one time worked in the Prime Minister’s Office, had appealed in the High Court against the Delhi court verdict that found him guilty in March 2008 of murdering Ms Bhatnagar. The trial court had convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He has been lodged in Tihar Jail for the last nine years.

The prosecution has said it will appeal against today’s verdict in the Supreme Court.
In the 2008 verdict, the trial judge had found that Mr Sharma hired hitmen to murder Ms Bhatnagar because he was worried she would go public with details of their relationship.  The same judge said that the former police officer did not deserve the death penalty because of his "excellent" service record.  The judge commented, "Except for the crime in question, he (Sharma) is an asset to this nation."

Ms Bhatnagar, a senior journalist with the newspaper The Indian Express, was murdered in her east Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999.  Her two-month-old son was with her when she was brutally stabbed to death.  She had reportedly met Mr Sharma while covering the Prime Minister’s Office.

Mr Sharma was in hiding for some time and had finally surrendered in September 2002.

Mr Sharma’s lawyer had argued that the evidence against him was largely circumstantial, and has been tampered with by the Delhi Police to implicate the former police officer.  The police, on the other hand, contends that Mr Sharma used his senior position to influence witnesses and to try and extricate himself from the case.