Jessica Lall
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Jessica Lall was a model in New Delhi who was working as a celebrity barmaid at a crowded socialite party when she was shot dead on April 29, 1999. Dozens of witnesses pointed to Siddharth Vashisht, a.k.a. Manu Sharma, the son of Venod Sharma, a wealthy and powerful Congress politician in Haryana, as the murderer. The surname "Lall" is sometimes spelled "Lal" in the media.
In the ensuing trial over seven years, inadequacies in the investigation, shoddy prosecution, and possible judicial lapses led to Manu Sharma and a number of others being acquitted on February 21, 2006.
Following intense media pressure, the prosecution appealed (a rare measure) and the Delhi High Court conducted proceedings on a fast track with daily hearings over 25 days. The lower court judgment was found faulty in law, and Manu Sharma was found guilty of having murdered Jessica Lall. He was sentenced to life on December 20, 2006.
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[edit] Anatomy of a very public murder
On April 29, 1999, leading socialite Bina Ramani organized a party at her restaurant, Tamarind Court Cafe, in the Qutub area of South Delhi - it was to be a farewell party for her husband Georges Mailhot who was going abroad for six months. Several youngsters and models were serving drinks at the 'Once upon a time' bar, including Jessica Lall and her friends Malini Ramani and Shyan Munshi.
At about 0200 hours when the party was almost over, Manu Sharma with his friends Amardeep Singh, Alok Khanna, Amit Jhingan and Vikas Yadav, allegedly entered the restaurant and demanded liquor from Jessica.
Since the bar was being closed, Jessica told Sharma that no more drinks would be served. After some altercation, Sharma lost his temper and fired his gun - once in the air and the second time at Jessica. The bullet struck her temple and she died on the spot.
Sharma fled from the restaurant, leaving his car which was later moved by his friends. During an intense hunt for Sharma over a week, three of his friends were arrested, but Sharma himself went underground. His father, Venod Sharma was asked to step down as Congress Party Chief in the state.
Eventually Manu Sharma surrendered on May 6 in Chandigarh. Subsequently the fourth person, Vikas Yadav, son of DP Yadav, another heavyweight minister from Uttar Pradesh with mafia connections, also surrendered.
Manu Sharma gave a statement to the Police, which was taped, in which he admits shooting Jessica Lal. "The idea at that time was to shoot in challenge. It was embarrassing to hear that even if I paid a thousand bucks I would not get a sip of drink." This audiotape was obtained and aired by the TV channel NDTV but it does not constitute legal testimony. Subsequently however, the confession was retracted, and a not guilty plea was entered in the trial.
Manu Sharma is the son of one of the leading politicians in the state of Haryana, Venod Sharma, belonging to the Congress Party. Earlier a minister in the National Cabinet, Venod Sharma was a minister in the Haryana government at the time the trial judgement was announced.
Subsequently, a sting operation by the newsmagazine Tehelka exposed how Venod Sharma paid bribes to win over key witnesses, and Venod Sharma resigned from the Haryana Ministry on October 6th 2006,
One of Manu's aunts is a daughter of erstwhile President of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma.
[edit] The initial trial
The Jessica Lall murder case went up for trial in August 1999, with Manu charged with murder and his friends charged of related crimes such as destroying evidence and sheltering criminal suspects.
Four of the witnesses who had initially said they had seen the murder happen, eventually turned hostile. Shyan Munshi, a model and friend who was serving drinks beside Jessica Lall, changed his story completely; as for earlier testimony recorded with the police, he said that the writing was in Hindi, a language he was not familiar with, and it should be repudiated. It is widely speculated that he may be under threat and that the judicial system is unable to provide witnesses with adequate security. Karan Rajput and Shivdas Yadav also had not seen anything, while Parikshit Sagar said he had left the place before the incident. In a conversation with the sister of Jessica, Karan Rajput is alleged to have played a tape-recording [1] discussing with some friends how Venod Sharma's people have "won over" several witnesses already.
Also, it appears that the cartridges used in the murder were altered. Although the gun was never recovered, these cartridges were for some reason sent for Forensic evaluation, where it turned out that they had been fired from different weapons. This led to a further weakening of the prosecution case.
[edit] Shyan Munshi's testimony
Shyan Munshi (pronounced "Shayan") is the son of a well known ophthalmologist in Kolkata, where he studied at the reputed Don Bosco School. An aspiring model and ostensibly a friend of Jessica Lal's, Shyan Munshi was serving behind the bar with Jessica when the shooting occurred. In his initial statement he said unequivocally that Manu Sharma had fired the gun twice, once into the air, and once at Jessica. This testimony was recorded by the police in their First Information Report (FIR), which Shyan signed. However, during the trial he claimed that he did not know Hindi and that he was not aware of what he had signed. It later turned out that he had passed the secondary school exam with Hindi as a subject, and had also acted in the Hindi movie, Jhankar Beats.
At the trial, Shyan said that Manu Sharma had fired only once, and that also into the air. He described Manu's clothes carefully. Subsequently, he said that another bullet, fired by someone else, was the one to hit Jessica. About this man's dress, he was evasive, and saying only that he was wearing a "light-coloured" shirt. This led to the "two-gun theory" - with the forensic report said that the bullets were fired from different weapons. It is widely believed that the forensic reports were also doctored.
Following the acquittal, there was intense pressure on Shyan Munshi, who was already launched on a successful modeling career. He was involved in hosting a cooking show on TV and other activity.
On May 13, 2006, he was detained at Calcutta airport as he was about to board a flight for Bangkok, along with his wife Piya Rai Chaudhuri. Subsequently, he faced extensive police questioning, and may now be facing charges of perjury, based on evidence such as his Hindi examination marks and the fact that he acted in Hindi films.
The high court has ordered Shyan and other witnesses who turned hostile in court, to appear before it to explain why they should not be prosecuted for
[edit] Malini Ramani's testimony
Another witness, Malini Ramani, daughter of the party host Bina Ramani, described the events as follows.
At 2 AM after the bar had closed, Manu Sharma walked in wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. The following is from her testimony in court:
Asked by the prosecutor what happened next, she said, "He asked for drinks. I told him that the bar was closed. He said that he would pay cash. I said it did not matter. Then he said that he would pay Rs 1000 for a drink. I told him that the bar was closed. Then he made a comment that "I could have a sip of you for Rs 1000," Malini Ramani told the crowded court.
Could you identify that man, the prosecutor asked.
"Yes, I can," she said and pointed to Manu Sharma. "The man who asked for drinks looked like him," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," she said.
"What did you do then?"
"I was irritated by the comment and left the Tamarind Court and went towards the courtyard where I crossed my mother," she said.
"I had hardly gone out for a minute or two when Shyan ran towards me screaming Jessica had been shot. I passed out and fainted. It was only at 6 in the morning when I came to know from my mother that Jessica was dead. I was told this on phone," Ramani told the court.
In the years that Manu Sharma has been free on bail, he has set up the thriving Blue Ice night spot and disco in Chandigarh.
[edit] Aquittal by Lower Court
After extensive hearings with nearly a hundred witnesses, the court passed its order on February 21, 2006. Throughout his 179-page case verdict, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) S L Bhayana said that police sought to 'create' and 'introduce false evidence' against Sharma. The judgment repeatedly hints that the prosecution may have attempted, from the very beginning, to fabricate the evidence and present false witnesses, so as to render the case indefensible. In conclusion, he agrees with "the counsel for the accused that on April 30, 1999 the police had decided to frame the accused," read the judgment.
The judgment faulted the police for deciding on the accused first and then collecting evidence against him, instead of letting the evidence lead them to the murderer. Since the prosecution had failed to establish guilt beyond doubt, all nine accused were acquitted.
[edit] The aftermath
In the immense uproar that followed, hundreds of thousands of people e-mailed and SMS-ed their outrage on petitions forwarded by media channels and newspapers to the President and others seeking remedies for the alleged miscarriage of justice. A poll conducted by the newspaper Hindustan Times showed that on a scale of 1 to 10, the public's faith in law enforcement in India was about 2.7.
Public pressure built up with newspapers splashing headlines such as "No one killed Jessica", and TV channels running SMS polls. Models, fashion designers, friends, relatives and others have held candle-light vigils at India Gate in New Delhi to protest the injustice of it all.
Surender Sharma, the police inspector responsible for the investigation, was transferred from the plum Hauz Khas position to a bureaucratic post. The police have also launched an inquiry against the possibly deliberate ineptness of their own earlier investigation.
On April 18, 2006, the a division bench comprising Justice Manmohan Sareen and Justice J M Malik released Manu Sharma on Rs 1 Lakh (USD 2000) bail[2]. They also pulled up the Delhi Police and urged them to ensure minimal delays in the re-trial process.
[edit] Appeal and Conviction in High Court
On March 25 2006, the Delhi High Court admitted an appeal by the police against the Jessica Lall murder acquittals, issuing bailable warrants against prime accused Manu Sharma and eight others and restraining them from leaving the country. This was not a re-trial, but merely an appeal based on evidence already marshalled in the lower court.
On September 9 2006, a sting operation by the news magazine Tehelka was shown on the TV program Star News, which revealed how the witnesses had been bribed and coerced into retracting their initial testimony. Venod Sharma was named in the expose as paying millions of rupees to some of the witnesses.
Facing pressure from the central Congress leaders (in view of forthcoming elections in the neighbouring state of Punjab), Venod Sharma resigned from the Haryana cabinet.
[edit] Judgement
On December 15, 2006, the High Court bench of Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin, in a 61-page judgement held Manu Sharma guilty based on existing evidence.
The judgement said that the lower court had been lax in not considering the testimony of witnesses such as Deepak Bhojwani: "With very great respect to the learned judge, we point out that this manner of testing the credibility of the witness is hardly a rule of appreciation of evidence... Obviously, this reflects total lack of application of mind and suggests a hasty approach towards securing a particular end, namely the acquittal." [3]
In particular, the key witness Shyan Munshi came in for serious criticism, and may be facing criminal proceedings. The judgement says, of his repudiating his own FIR: "[Munshi] is now claiming that the said statement was recorded in Hindi while he had narrated the whole story in English as he did not know Hindi at all... We do not find this explanation of Munshi to be convincing." Regarding Munshi's testimony about the two-gun theory, the judgement says: "In court he has taken a somersault and came out with a version that there were two gentlemen at the bar counter. ... [W]e have no manner of doubt that on this aspect he is telling a complete lie... " [4]
All 32 witnesses who turned hostile have been asked to appear before the court on February 21 to explain why they should not be tried for perjury.
On December 20, Manu Sharma was awarded life imprisonment. The other accused, Vikas Yadav and AmarDeep Singh Gill, were awarded four years of imprisonment for destroying evidence. [5]
Manu Sharma's lawyer, R K Naseem said the decision would be appealed in Supreme Court, because the judgement was wrong in holding Bina Ramani to have been an eyewitness.
According to a widely circulated media report, Manu Sharma told a friend after the trial in Hindi: mere bhaagya main yehi thaa. taqdeer kaa faislaa yehi thaa (Such was my fate. This was decided by destiny). [4]
There was widespread celebration of Manu's conviction on the media, where it was seen as evidence that the people's voice could move the wheels of justice. Given the past record in India of cases such as Sanjeev Nanda, it was felt that the Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo convictions finally indicated that even the most powerful were not above the law.
[edit] See also
- Law in India
- Priyadarshini Mattoo: Similar murder case from 1996 with a well-connected suspect. In 1999, the court acquitted due to poor investigation. Culprit convicted on appeal by CBI to Delhi High Court
- Nitish Katara: another high profile murder case currently in trial.
