New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the city police and co-accused Aruna Chadha to file written submissions on the plea of latter seeking quashing of fresh charges, including abetment of rape, against her in the former air hostess Geetika Sharma suicide case.
"Brief synopsis be filed, indicating the evidence relied upon by both the parties with the respective page numbers, within four weeks. Re-notify on July 3," Justice GP Mittal said. The court had earlier issued the notice to Delhi Police summoning trial court records in the case involving former Haryana home minister Gopal Kanda and Chadha as accused.
Besides the charge of abetment of suicide, the lower court had recently invoked some other harsher penal provisions relating to rape, unnatural sex and their abatement, against Kanda and Chadha. She had sought dropping of fresh charges.
During the hearing, senior advocate UU Lalit, appearing for Chadha, said, "The trial judge had turned upside down the principles of criminal jurisprudence by invoking the charges of abetment of rape against her."
"Neither the postmortem report nor the report of gynaecologist nor the disclosure statement (of Chadha) indicate that these offence (abetment of rape) was committed by Aruna Chadha," Lalit said.
He said that fresh charges have wrongly been invoked and grave prejudice will be caused if they are not quashed. The plea was opposed by the counsel for Delhi Police who said the trial court was well within its rights to make a prima facie opinion against the accused.
Geetika, a former air hostess, who was earlier employed with Kanda's MDLR airlines, was found dead on August 5 at her Ashok Vihar residence in North West Delhi. In her August 4 suicide note, she had said she was ending her life due to "harassment" by Kanda and Chadha.
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