‘Cops showed me Javed in jail’

An eyewitness in the rape and murder case of a nine-year-old girl in Nehru Nagar, Kurla, said in the sessions court on Friday that the police had shown her the accused at Thane jail.

An eyewitness in the rape and murder case of a nine-year-old girl in Nehru Nagar, Kurla, said in the sessions court on Friday that the police had shown her the accused at Thane jail.

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The police had arrested Javed Shaikh, who was working with a local cable operator, on July 1, 2010, after his DNA matched the sample found on the nine-year-old girl whose body was found in a shanty in Vatsalatai Nagar chawl on June 19, 2010. Shaikh was booked for murder, kidnap and raping a minor.

The eyewitness, a self-employed woman whose name has been withheld, told the court that on June 6, 2010, she had seen Shaikh and the nine-year-old enter the lane in Vatsalatai Nagar chawl. But, it was only on July 2, 2010, that she told the Nehru Nagar police when they approached her with the photograph of the victim.

“During cross-examination, the eyewitness said police had shown her Javed Shaikh at Thane Central jail,” defence lawyer Sudha Dwivedi said. “She then identified Javed in jail as the one she had seen before,” she added.