Uber case: Cops "hand-in-glove" with prosecution, claims Yadav

New Delhi, Feb 27: The Uber cab driver, accused of raping a 25-year-old woman executive, on Friday claimed before a court here that the Delhi Police were "hand-in-glove" with the prosecution to ensure his conviction and there were several loopholes in the probe conducted in the case.

Continuing his final arguments before Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja, the counsel, appearing for 32-year-old accused Shiv Kumar Yadav, said "the way investigation has been conducted shows that the investigating agency and the prosecution are hand-in-glove to assure accused's conviction."

Yadav's counsel D K Mishra argued that several questions were unanswered including dropping of the victim's fiancee from the list of prosecution witnesses by the police.

"The girl's fiancee is a connecting witness to her mobile number. He is the one who gave the number to the police after which the call detail record was taken out. Why is his name not in the list of witnesses? Since he is not a witness, how do we verify if the number provided by him is not fake?" he said.

The counsel further said the SIM card of the girl's mobile number was not given to the police which showed that the investigating agency was trying to "suppress the facts of the case".

Asked by the judge what was the relevance of the SIM card in the case, the counsel said it was significant as it contained details of the messages sent by the woman after the alleged incident.

Counsel: The SIM card used by the girl was not given to police

"The SIM card used by the girl was not given to police. It would have the messages of the woman disclosing about the incident. How do we retrieve the content of the messages? This is being hidden to suppress the facts," he said.

The counsel also raised questions on the time of booking the cab and time of informing the police about the incident. He said that as per her first statement to the police, the girl claimed that she boarded the cab at 9.30 pm but later, in her statement before a metropolitan magistrate, she claimed to have booked the cab after 10pm and boarded the same around 11 pm.

The counsel also said the PCR call details revealed that the girl had made the first call to the police at 1.09 am and the police reached her over an hour later.

"However, the girl in her statement had said that police came to her within 15-20 minutes of making the call, which was contradictory to the document on record," the counsel said.

PTI