CBI changes lawyer in Soren case

New Delhi, July 6 (UNI) Chastened by Delhi High Court on previous hearing, the Central Bureau of Investigation informed the judges about the change of its counsel in Sibu Soren case.

The division bench comprising Justices RS Sodhi and HR Malhotra adjourned the hearing of the case till July 19.

The former Union Minister has moved the High Court after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder of Shashinath Jha, his private secretary.

The division bench had pulled up the investigating agency for its shoddy home work. They had even asked its counsel to come prepared when the court will hear the case next time.

Sibu Soren challenged the conviction and the life imprisonment term handed down by the trial court.

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

The High Court had expressed disappointment over the CBI's inability to conclusively prove that the dead body was of Shashinath Jha.

Soren challenged the trial court's conviction order on the grounds that the 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 turned out to be negative. Soren's counsel argued that the dead body was not of Jha.

Jha was abducted from Dhaula Kuan area of South Delhi on 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 Nauroji 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