CBI urges capital punishment in Mattoo case

New Delhi, Sep 7: The Central Bureau of Investigation today urged the Delhi High Court to award death sentence on Santosh Singh for raping and murdering Priyadarshini Mattoo.

Concluding the arguments on rape and murder charges, the CBI counsel told a division bench of Justices R S Sodhi and P K Bhasin the arguments on the capital punishment could wait.

During yesterday's hearing the Court found fault with the CBI for not subjecting the samples of the undergarments, vaginal swab and slide samples of Priyadarshini to DNA test when the same analysis was used to match the blood and semen samples of accused Santosh Singh, son of a former senior IPS officer.

The court agreed with the trial court, which had acquitted Santosh, that there was no proof to suggest that it samples, sealed by the Safdarjung Hospital, were not tampered with.

They said the CBI has failed to explain in whose custody the samples were between January 25 to 29. Merely sealing the sample was not a foolproof measure and did not suggest that was left unattended for four days.

Moreover, there was nothing to establish that the samples were sealed on January 25 itself before being sent to the Hyderabad-based CDFD (Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics), the Court said.

Santosh, a practising lawyer himself, was seen taking meticulous notes sitting in the second row of the court.

Priyadarshini Mattoo was murdered in January 1996 at her residence in Vasant Kunj area of South Delhi allegedly by Santosh Singh, whose father was then a serving Delhi Police officer.

UNI