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Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The son of India's governing Congress party has been sentanced to life in prison for the murder of Jessica Lal in 1999.

Manu Sharma, the son of former federal minister Venod Sharma, was convicted of shooting the model in one of Delhi's most fashionable restaurants, Tamarind Court.

The case was reopened after Sharma and eight other co-accused were acquitted in February, prompting a public outcry.

The Delhi high court also ordered Sharma to pay 50,000 rupees ($1,100) in compensation to Jessica Lal's family.

While the prosecution had been demanding Sharma be sentanced to death, the Delhi high court sentanced him to life in prison, since there was no evidence to support that the murder was pre-planned.

Two of Sharma's friends, Vikas Yadav, the son of another politician, and Amardeep Singh Gill, a former manager with Coca-Cola, were sentenced to four years in jail for destroying evidence.

Prosecutors said Manu Sharma fired at Jessica Lal after she refused to serve him a drink at a Tamarind Court, where she was working as a waitress.

Several eyewitnesses came forward to the police initially, but retracted their statements by the time the case came to trial seven years later.

The trial finally collapsed in February 2006 when the lower court judge said the prosecution's case contained loopholes and there was insufficient evidence for a conviction.

The acquittals sparked public outrage, with protest rallies and a sustained media campaign launched to demand justice for Jessica Lal, who was 34 when she was killed. Police appealed against the acquittals and opened an investigation into allegations that there had been a conspiracy to pervert justice. Several witnesses and police officials involved in the case were questioned.

Campaigners said it had been the latest of many cases where members of India's elite were able to manipulate the law and get away with murder.

His conviction on 18th December 2006 for this 1999 murder, after having been acquitted earlier, is considered one of the landmark judgments in Indian Law where a rich, powerful defendant was convicted.

In the earlier, widely criticized trial, the court found many flaws in the prosecution and all charges were thrown out. The verdict led to a national outcry, leading to an appeal by the prosecution at the Delhi High Court, which sentenced him to life imprisonment while criticizing the lower court judgment.

The son of a powerful politician and heir to a sugar mill fortune, Manu Sharma and his family bribed and pressurized witnesses, as revealed in a Tehelka sting operation. Most of the witnesses changed their testimony radically during the trial lasting seven years. Despite dozens of witnesses, Manu Sharma, along with seven other well-connected defendants, was acquitted of all charges by judge S.L. Bhayana on February 21, 2006.

That court decision left a situation where a person was murdered in view of dozens of people, yet no one was being held liable. Wide public outcry led to the case being re-admitted in the Delhi High court in March 2006, where it was tried on a "fast track" basis.

Around the same time, a media sting operation on some of the witnesses documented the processes by which witnesses had been threatened or bribed. In court, some of the witnesses were re-examined, and a spurious two-gun theory was thrown out, and Manu was found guilty on 18 December after 25 sittings.

This case is widely viewed as a litmus test of India's turning image. It is one of several where the high and mighty showed themselves to be above the Law in India (see Sanjeev Nanda). That the tides were changing was clear in the sentence handed out by the same High Court bench in the Priyadarshini Mattoo case. It is widely believed that more than anything else it is the relatively free press, and especially the new regional TV channels, that helped bring the case to a retrial, maintaining the faith of people in the Indian Judiciary.

Family Background

Manu Sharma is the son of wealthy and influential Haryana politician Venod Sharma of the Indian Congress Party. Venod Sharma, who had served as a Minister at the centre in the Narasimha Rao cabinet, was president of the Congress Party in Haryana at the time of the crime. Manu's uncle is the son-in-law of former president of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma and the family owns a number of sugar mills and entertainment businesses in Punjab and Haryana.

After the negative publicity following the murder, Venod Sharma was denied a congress ticket for the Parliamentary elections, but he managed to win an election to the state legislature in 2004 and was inducted into the State cabinet as Minister of Power.

However after the Tehelka sting operation named him as being behind the bribes paid to key witnesses, he resigned to national party chief Sonia Gandhi in October 2006.

The murder

On April 29, 1999, the model Jessica Lall was shot dead while working as a celebrity barmaid at a crowded party in Delhi. Manu Sharma, along with some friends, entered the restaurant around 2 AM, when the bar had just closed. Manu demanded liquor from Jessica, and when she refused they had an altercation. Several people present around the bar saw him fire twice, once in the air, and once at Jessica, and many witnesses testified to the police about Manu Sharma being the murderer.

Also present at the party was Delhi Police Joint Commissioner Yudhvir Singh Dadwal (elevated to Commissioner in July 2007), but he was not present at the bar during the incident.

Seven days after the murder, Manu Sharma surrendered to the police, and made a confession which was tape recorded. On October 2, 2006, the NDTV news channel obtained the audiotape of the confession and broadcast some segments from it:

• Manu: There was Jessica Lall, I did not know her name.
  I was told even if you give a thousand bucks, I will not give a sip of wine and I said that we have got an arrangement there. I pulled out my pistol there
  ... and I fired one shot in the air.

• Police: Air?

• Manu: Yes, that is inside the Colonnade. So it went into the roof and nobody bothered, nobody moved. Then I pointed at Jessica and what I intended to do was I pointed slightly away from her so that I could see her hair, I wanted to generally shoot.

• Police: What was the idea?

• Manu: 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.
  I pointed towards her a little and fired the shot. So I think I hit someone, I was just trying to see what had happened, when this lady comes up there.

• Police: What type of lady?

• Manu: Oldish, thin and she says you don't worry and stay here and then I realised something had happened. Then I could hear people saying somebody has shot.
  I knew I should move. I took a lift on scooter/motorcycle and I saw a little garden and sort of a dhaba and I put my pistol there. I took a hitch from a scooter, a Tata Safari and a tractor before I reached right in front of Tony's house.
  Alok and Vikas were all there by that time. When I inquired, they told me, "I think she is dead". I said single gunshot, he said, "yes". I said who is she – "Jessica Lall".

However, the Delhi Police made no attempt to formalize this statement in front of a magistrate or to obtain evidence based on this confession for the trial.

Eye witnesses accounts corroborated with this confession, and a consistent story emerged: Manu along with friends Amardeep Singh and Alok Khanna (at the time both were senior executives with Coca-Cola India), Vikas Yadav (son of notorious criminal and member of parliament D. P. Yadav and prime accused in the Nitish Katara murder case), and Amit Jhingan, had entered the bar after it had closed. Jessical Lal had rebuffed Manu's request for a drink. A powerful politician's son, Manu was unaccustomed to being denied.

According to the testimony of Malini Ramani, another model serving at the bar with Jessica, Manu offered to pay Rs 1000 (several times the price of 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'".

At the end of this altercation, Manu brought out his 0.22 pistol from his pocket, and fired one shot into the air, and the second straight at Jessica's head; she eventually died a few hours later at the Apollo hospital.

The five friends fled immediately. Manu went into hiding for seven days, conferring with family, and initially his father apparently said "face the punishment, what can I do?" However, he subsequently started helping his son. Manu went underground in a house indicated by his father in South Delhi, and the pistol was disposed of (it was never recovered - what Manu Sharma told about it to the police is not known). After his surrender, one by one, all the statements by eyewitnesses, as well as Manu's own confession, were retracted or were thrown out by the court due to inadequate legal process.

The Trial Court

In the original trial, very few witnesses would come forward to depose. Eyewitnesses who initially claimed to have seen the murder, such as Shyan Munshi, Karan Rajput and Shivdas Yadav, all turned hostile. Increasingly, revelations in the media have been piecing together the story of the pressure, bribery and coercion that led to this reversal.

The Cover-Up

In July-September 2006, the magazine Tehelka carried out a three month long sting operation against these three key witnesses, which was aired in a leading Hindi News channel, where they traced the nature of bribes and threats that was used to intimidate the witnesses.

One of the key witnesses was Karan Rajput, who was present at the restaurant to borrow money from his nephew, Jitendra, the manager at the bar. Rajput who had long been an alcoholic, was asked by his nephew to sit at a chair which happened to be facing the bar where Shayan and Jessica were making drinks. After the murder, Karan initially said he saw a boy in a white T-shirt come up to the bar and shoot Jessica. However, in the court testimony, he turned hostile, denying that he had been there at all.

After the incident Karan Rajput lived a life of parties and drinking bouts - although he had no job or other visible means of income. In January 2005, he died of cirrhosis of the liver. The Tehelka expose revealed that Karan Rajput was a regular visitor to Venod Sharma's offices in Chandigarh and Okhla, Delhi where he would collect money. Karan's friend Surendra told the Tehelka reporter how he would go with him; he feels that a total figure between Rs. 20 to 35 Lakhs was paid:

• Surendra: I saw him receiving money at Okhla.

• Question: Where at Okhla?

• Surendra: From Sharma’s place. In front of Okhla depot there is a building. Sharma owns entire building. We used to collect money from there itself.

• Question: How much money?

• Surendra: Whatever we needed.

• Question: Whatever you say?

• Surendra: Whatever we demand. We used to get 20-25 thousand every month just like that. His number is in mamu’s ( Karan Rajput) diary.
  ...

• Question: Would you accompany Rajput when he used to go to collect money ?

• Surendra: Yes.

• Question: How would they pay, cheque or cash?

• Surendra: Cheque.

• Question: How much money would come?

• Surendra: They gave twice in Nepal.

• Question: When you would go to Okhla was the amount fixed?

• Surendra: Later they fixed it at 20 thousand. Initially he would get 60 thousand, sometime up to one or two lakh. Sharma had taken his (Karan Rajput) life’s entire responsibility.

Another witness, the electrician Shivdas Yadav, was standing behind the bar when the murder occurred. In his initial statement, subsequently retracted, he also claimed to have witnessed the murder by Manu. At some point before the trial, Shivdas suddenly came into some money with which he opened an electrician's business in Uttar Pradesh. Recently, when a journalist from Tehelka called Shivdas posing to be Jessica Lall's grieving sister, Shivdas accepted that his initial confession, and that of the others, were all true, and that he was scared of what might happen to him were he to tell the truth.

A third witness, Shyan Munshi was right there, serving behind the bar with Jessica. He comes from an upper class family and it was initially hoped that he would be a reliable witness. In his initial statement, recorded with the police as his signed First Information Report, he said that both shots were fired by the same person. However, later in court he said that the document had been written in Hindi and he did not know Hindi, so he could not tell what he had signed. He then changed his story to say that Manu had only fired once, at the ceiling. The second shot, the one that killed Jessica, was fired by someone else, whom he could not describe.

Subsequently the media revealed that he knew Hindi well: he had acted in a number of Hindi-speaking films. When a reporter posing as a casting director for a foreign film venture approached him, he discussed nuances of Hindi grammar: "Like in Hindi word `car’ is feminine gender while in Bengali it’s neutral gender."

There were indications that the Delhi Police also may have introduced false forensic evidence, by switching one of the spent cartridges for another 0.22 one - subsequent tests indicated that the two cartridges had been fired from different guns. In view of the fact that the weapon was never recovered, other police officers questioned why the bullets were sent for testing at all. It is widely felt that the two-gun theory was built up with the help of the police, and based on Shyan Munshi's testimony.

Acquittal

Sharma was acquitted of all charges in February 2006. Not a single trustworthy witness could be found, despite the fact that the murder had been committed in the presence of dozens of people at the bar of the Tamarind Court Cafe restaurant in Delhi.

All the witnesses who had originally claimed to have seen Manu Sharma shoot Jessica turned hostile during the six years of the court case.

In Manu's native city, Chandigarh, no one was surprised at the acquittal. Until a few days before the judgment, 29-year-old Manu was seen attending parties in town, and running his popular disco-cum-pub, Blue Ice, in the posh Sector 17 market. He has a reputation for throwing well-organized parties around town. Shortly after he was released on bail in 2003, there was a fight between employees of Blue Ice and some customers; Manu too was reportedly involved, but his name was dropped from the case and the disco’s manager was booked instead.

Media Pressure

Manu's acquittal caused widespread outrage. Appeals were sent to the President of India and other top officials, so that the case could be reopened, claiming that this was a brazen case of misuse of power and influence by people in high places. Even in the venal atmosphere of the criminal justice system in India where the art of buying/ intimidating/ cajoling witnesses and bribing investigating policemen is well known, the circumstances were deemed too shocking.

On March 22, 2006, the Delhi High Court admitted an appeal by the police against the Jessica Lal murder acquittals, issuing bailable warrants against prime accused Manu Sharma and eight others and restraining them from leaving the country.

The further revelations in the media rekindled hopes that additional evidence may now be presented for both the original crime as well as the cover-up - in terms of cheque payments and other connections. Also, Venod Sharma's mobile phone number was found among the numbers listed on Karan Rajput's mobile; these calls could also be traced.

The prosecution is under considerable pressure in the court cases. The media pressure is also telling on the key witnesses, especially Shyan Munshi. In May 2006, Shyan tried to illegally leave the country but was arrested at Kolkata airport.

Venod Sharma Resigns

The media exposes, directly linking Venod Sharma to the key witnesses, led to calls for his resignation in the Parliament of India, particularly from the opposition party Indian Lok Dal. On October 6, 2006, Venod Sharma, succumbed to the pressure and resigned from the Congress ministry in Haryana.

High Court Judgement

The terms of the high court appeal was not a re-trial, but merely an appeal that the previous bench had not considered the evidence already presented.

On December 18, 2006, the High Court bench of Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin, in a 61-page judgement, held Manu Sharma guilty of murdering Jessica Lall. 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."

In particular, witness Shyan Munshi came in for serious criticism: he may be facing criminal proceedings. The judgement says, of his repudiating his own FIR: "[Munshi] is now claiming is 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 introducing 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... " All 32 witnesses who turned hostile were summoned to explain why they should not be tried for perjury.

On December 20, the High Court bench sentenced Manu Sharma to life imprisonment, and he was ordered to pay a compensation of Rs 50,000 to Jessica's family. The court also awarded four-year jail terms to

• Vikas Yadav, son of gangster and former Rajya Sabha MP D. P. Yadav (Vikas is already in jail as an undertrial in Nitish Katara murder case), and

• former Coca Cola General Manager Amardeep Singh Gill for their role in destroying evidence.

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.

Wikipedia.org

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 and public 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.

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. Ankur Kedia

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 D. P. 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 Lall. "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.

The initial trial