“If the element of genuineness of evidence is under serious clouds then the courts must ensure liberty of the accused," former Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Govind Mathur told The Quint.
Justice Mathur's comment comes in response to a question about the concerns arising from an investigative report published by WIRED, pointing towards the Pune Police's purported involvement in the fabrication of evidence in the Bhima Koregaon case.
This report by the American magazine comes amid a spate of independent investigations that seem to suggest that the purported evidence used to keep the accused in the case behind bars, may have been corrupt.
The report’s findings come after a cybersecurity firm, SentinelOne reportedly learned that the email accounts of Bhima Koregaon accused Rona Wilson, Varavara Rao, and Hany Babu were compromised by hackers in 2018 and 2019. As per WIRED, the recovery email and phone number that was added to Wilson’s account purportedly via a phishing mechanism, belonged to that of an official with the Pune City Police.
Wilson's email account is thereby said to have been used to further send phishing emails to other Bhima Koregaon accused, before his arrest in June 2018.
Find more details about how the security analysts, contacted by WIRED, are said to have arrived at these discoveries here.