The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the acquittal of underworld don Babloo Srivastava and his close aide, Mumbai-based businessman Nitin Gunwant Shah in the Lalit Suneja murder case, reported The Times of India.
Police had charged the two with entering into a conspiracy to kill Suneja after Shah and Suneja failed to settle a financial dispute. Suneja was murdered at Shakarpur in East Delhi in August 1992.
– TOI report
The bench, comprising Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and R K Agarwal, dismissed the Delhi government’s plea challenging the acquittal of the duo by the Delhi High Court. In 2007, a trial court has held the two guilty in the 1992 murder case and sentenced them to life.
Citing the Delhi police’s failure to prove a case against them as the reason for this dismissal, the SC bench went on to say:
The prosecution story suffers another grave lacunae ... it outrightly failed to prove the surrounding circumstances. To establish the threat of being killed, no corroborative evidence was produced nor any statement of account was placed on record to prove any outstanding amount to be paid by deceased Lalit Suneja to Nitin Shah.
– SC bench, according to TOI report
The court also went on to declare, as The Times of India reported, that the, “the deposition of Veena, wife of the victim (Suneja) is important, who stated that she had never heard of any business relationship between her husband and respondent Nitin Shah, nor she was aware of any hostility between the two.”
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)