HC pulls up CBI in Shashinath Jha murder case

New Delhi, May 28 (UNI) The Delhi High Court today pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation in the Shashinath Jha murder case.

Former Union Minister Sibu Soren has moved the High Court, challenging his conviction and life imprisonment term handed down by the trial court.

The trial court had on December 26, 2006 sentenced Soren and four others to life imprisonment for kidnapping and killing Jha on November 28, 1994.

A Division Bench headed by Justice R S Sodhi and H R Malhotra expressed disappointment over the CBI inability to conclusively prove that the dead body was that of Shashinath Jha's.

Soren challenged the trial court's conviction order on the grounds that its Judge had ignored the two DNA reports to identify the body of the deceased.

He claimed that every time the report was made available, it was turned out to be negative. Soren's counsel argued that the dead body was not Jha's.

Jha was abducted from Dhaula Kuan area of South Delhi in May 1994 and was later found murdered in Pisha Nagar area of Patna, Bihar.

The trial court had pronounced Soren guilty of criminal conspiracy, murder and abduction. His conviction was primarily because the court believed that he had a strong motive to get his personal assistant murdered.

The CBI had alleged that Soren had asked his P A Sushil Kumar to get the money transferred into his PNB account at Noroji Nagar against voting in favour of the Narasimha Rao government in 1993.

Jha, who got the details from Sushil Kumar over an extended session of drinks, blackmailed Soren into sharing the booty.

Although Soren helped Jha in setting up an export house with a fund of Rs 5 lakh, he was provoked after Jha asked him for more money when the enterprise sank, prompting the former into hatching a conspiracy to get rid of him.

The CBI also claimed that Jha had expressed apprehension of his murder to his mother Priyambada Devi and elder brother Vijaynath Jha, just three days before his mysterious disappearance.

UNI