E-Paper
CBI court acquits ex-MLA of abetment charges
The court also acquitted former MLA OP Jain Rajinder Sharma’s personal assistant, who was also booked by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
{Former Karnal sarpanch’s suicide}
A CBI special court on Wednesday acquitted former Haryana MLA Zile Ram Sharma in abetment to suicide of ex-sarpanch Karam Singh of Kambopura village in Karnal.
The court also acquitted former MLA OP Jain Rajinder Sharma’s personal assistant, who was also booked by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The proceedings against former MLA OP Jain were abated in December 2020, after his death in November 2020.
“We had maintained that the case was politically motivated and we have never met Karam Singh nor taken any money. More than 100 witnesses were examined and many of them turned hostile,” advocate Anil Kaushik, one of the defence counsels, said.
“There was no substantive evidence and moreover the medical opinion said that the poison was self-consumed and could not be forcibly administered,” defence counsel Umrish Gandhi added.
OP Jain was an independent MLA, while Zile Ram was elected on Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) (BL) ticket in 2009 and had switched sides to join the Congress. When the allegations surfaced, Jain was the transport minister and Zile Ram was chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) and both had to resign from their respective posts.
The copy of judgement was not immediately available.
Case dates back to 2011
Karam Singh had died on June 7, 2011, in Karnal under mysterious circumstances.
The case was initially being probed by Haryana crime branch. In 2012, Punjab and Haryana high court had handed over the probe to CBI, finding the Haryana crime branch “wishing away the death case as suicide”.
In 2013, the CBI had filed a chargesheet against three persons, including the two MLAs. The chargesheet alleged that Karam Singh was fed up with Jain and Sharma as they were not returning ₹12.5 lakh bribe money that they had allegedly taken from him on the pretext of providing jobs to three people.
The chargesheet was filed by the probe agency before a CBI court in Panchkula against OP Jain and Zile Ram Sharma. Rajinder, Jain’s personal assistant, was also named in the chargesheet. The complaint in the case was filed by the deceased’s son Rajinder Singh.
Rajinder had alleged that both Jain and Sharma used to take money on the pretext of providing government jobs to people, but in Karam Singh’s case, none of his applicants got the jobs despite giving money and the legislators even refused to return the sum.
The chargesheet stated that the former village head kept asking for money from the accused in vain. After that, he allegedly ended his life on June 7, 2011. Police had earlier launched a murder probe, but the accused were later charged with abetment to suicide in the CBI chargesheet.
It was after the opinion of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, doctors that Section 306 (abetment to suicide) was invoked by CBI. Both the institutes opined that aluminium phosphide, which was the cause of the death, could not be forcefully ingested.
