Swadichha Sane case: Court denies permission for narco test on accused

A city court on Wednesday rejected the crime branch’s plea seeking permission to conduct a narco analysis on the two lifeguards arrested in connection with the suspected murder of the missing MBBS student, Swadichha Sane

A city court on Wednesday rejected the crime branch’s plea seeking permission to conduct a narco analysis on the two lifeguards arrested in connection with the suspected murder of the missing MBBS student, Swadichha Sane.

Swadichha Sane case: Court denies permission for narco test on accused

Additional chief metropolitan magistrate, S V Dindokar, also turned down the crime branch’s request to extend the police remand of the duo by a day, and instead sent them to 14 days in judicial custody.

The police informed the court they were still searching for the body of Sane who had gone missing from Bandra Bandstand since November 29, 2021. The area, where the body was suspected to have been dumped, had a whirlpool making the operation more difficult, the police claimed.

Advocate Harshman Chavan, who appeared for the accused, Mittu Sukhdev Singh and Abdul Jabbar Sattar Ansari, said it would not be possible to find the body after 13 months. He also refused to give consent for the lie-detection test and said the duo was tortured in police custody.

Earlier, the crime branch had conducted narco analysis and brain-mapping tests on Singh – the prime suspect, but the results were inconclusive.

The police said both were lifeguards and were born and brought up in Bandra. Singh was arrested on January 14 while Ansari was arrested a day later.

Sane was a third-year student at Sir JJ Hospital and Grant Medical College. On the morning of November 29, 2021, she had boarded a train from Virar and alighted at Andheri as she was to appear for her prelims at 2 pm. She then boarded another train to Bandra, from where she took an autorickshaw to Bandstand. Singh was the last person to interact with her before she went missing.