Kirti Vyas murder: Court refuses bail to accused

The sessions court on Friday rejected the bail plea of Siddhesh Tamhankar, a former Bblunt salon chain employee, booked along with his colleague for allegedly murdering Kirti Vyas, finance manager of the firm, in 2018.

The sessions court on Friday rejected the bail plea of Siddhesh Tamhankar, a former Bblunt salon chain employee, booked along with his colleague for allegedly murdering Kirti Vyas, finance manager of the firm, in 2018.

The sessions court on Friday rejected the bail plea of Siddhesh Tamhankar, a former Bblunt salon chain employee, booked along with his colleague for allegedly murdering Kirti Vyas, finance manager of the firm, in 2018

Tamhankar, 42, who had applied for bail on the grounds of parity, approached the court after the apex court granted bail to his co-accused, Khushi Sahjwani, in July. However, the trial court rejected his plea, saying the offence is very serious and there is strong technical evidence in the case. The trial court said the apex court granted bail to Khushi as she is woman, and that Tamhankar is not entitled to parity nor there is any change in circumstance.

Advocate Sandeep Karnik had argued for Tamhankar that the 42-year-old is behind bars since May 5, 2018. The case of the prosecution is on a DNA sample collected from Sahjwani’s car, that too after two months. He said undue weightage is given by the prosecution to CCTV footage, in which the victim is seen near the car.

He had pointed out that there is no witness to the killing, there is no evidence that the car had stopped at any point, it is impossible to believe prosecution theory of murder that Vyas was killed in a moving car and the body was shifted to the boot of the car. The alleged extra-judicial confession of co-accused Sahjwani is not reliable, the body of the victim is not found, hence in the absence of recovery of corpus-delicti, case of murder cannot be inferred. The co-accused is released on bail charges against both are same, hence Tamhankar is also entitled for bail on the grounds of parity.”

Special public prosecutor AK Chimalkar had argued for the state that co-accused was granted bail by the apex court as she is a woman undertrial prisoner and looking into her family conditions. We are ready to begin trial, but accused is consuming time by filing bail applications.”

Additional sessions judge, MG Deshpande, rejected the bail application, observing that “there is strong technical evidence in the case, we are ready to expedite the trial the accused are delaying it, the apex court granted bail to Sahjwani as she is a woman, Tamhankar is not entitled to parity nor there is any change in circumstances.

Though there are 110 witnesses and a 936-page charge-sheet, the prosecution won’t examine all of them during trial. The Bombay high court (HC), while rejecting Tamhankar’s bail application, has earlier already observed that in a trial for murder it is not an absolute necessity or essential ingredient to establish Corpus-Delicti.

The day when Sahjwani went missing she was seen in the car with the accused. There are several calls between Khushi and Tamhankar before and after murder.

While arresting the two, the police had alleged they killed Vyas who worked with BBlunt Salon as a finance manager along with the two. The police had claimed that Tamhankar and Sahjwani had eliminated Vyas as she had served notice to Tamhankar to terminate him for his bad performance.

The murder took place on March 16, 2018.

In June 2021, a sessions court had rejected bail plea of both sent from prisons, citing the high power committee recommendations for the release of prisoners on temporary bail to decongest prisons during the pandemic.