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Coaching centre deaths: Delhi high court seeks CBI's reply to bail pleas of 4 co-owners
The Delhi high court will hear the case next on September 11.
The Delhi high court on Thursday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to file its reply to bail pleas of four basement co-owners in connection with the deaths of three IAS aspirants in Old Rajinder Nagar.
The court will hear the case next on September 11.
Three civil service aspirants Shreya Yadav (25) of Uttar Pradesh, Tanya Soni (25) from Telangana and Nevin Delvin (24) from Kerala died after the basement of the building housing Rau's IAS Study Circle was flooded following heavy rain in central Delhi's Old Rajinder Nagar on July 27 evening.
The jailed co-owners of the Old Rajinder Nagar coaching centre basement, where three civil services aspirants died after drowning in July, moved the Delhi high court seeking bail in the criminal case against them.
The four co-owners have pleaded that they were merely the landlords of the basement which was let out on rent to the coaching centre and, therefore, had no role in the unfortunate event.
A sessions court has earlier rejected the bail applications moved by the co-owners of the basement – Parvinder Singh, Tajinder Singh, Harvinder Singh and Sarbjit Singh – saying the CBI probe was at an initial stage and their specific roles had to be ascertained.
The case, being probed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), was transferred from the Delhi Police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the high court.
In the application filed in the high court, one of the co-owners said the trial court, while denying them bail, failed to consider that the co-owners had let out the basement and the third floor of the building on lease for running the coaching centre, an activity permissible under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) norms, and they never intended to commit such an offence nor had any knowledge of it.
The bail application said the trial court did not consider the fact that the co-owners, who have not been named in the FIR, acted as good samaritans as they voluntarily went to the police station and subjected themselves to the custody of the investigating officer after the incident, which clearly shows their bonafide.
On August 23, the trial court had rejected their bail applications and said it was not necessary that the exact happening or precise incident must be in the knowledge of the offender to invoke the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
