Five bullets, seven injuries!

[Gopal Krishna]

Five bullets, seven injuries!  

Ex-Information Advisor to Prime Minister V. P. Singh & ex-editor, Hindustan Times, Financial Express & The Times of India, Prem Shankar Jha writes about a prominent verdict of a retiring judge. 

The Shadow of Haren Pandya’s Case Lies Long Over Justice Arun Mishra

https://thewire.in/law/haren-pandya-case-justice-arun-mishra 

1. Justice Arun Mishra is retiring on 2nd September, 2020. His prominent verdict is not his verdict on Prashant Bhushan's contempt but the verdict in the 2003 case of murder of Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya. Gujarat High Court acquitted all 12 convicts, CBI appealed in the Supreme Court in 2011. It remained pending there for 7 years and then the matter came to Justice Mishra bench in October 2018.

2. CBI case was constructed around eyewitness Yaadram. The eyewitness claimed to have seen the killer fire 5 shots at Pandya who was sitting in the driver's seat of his Maruti 800. One shot entered his scrotum (the bag of skin that contains the two roundish male sex organs) and traveled up his body.

Find attached the official police photo of the Maruti. Examine the driver's side window.

3. In trashing the CBI case, High Court ruled this such construction of the act of murder was impossible because police and eyewitness Yaadram had submitted that  door glass of car was rolled up. It only had a three inch opening. No shooter could get 5 bullets into different parts of Pandya's body, including his scrotum from below, from that angle.

4. Justice Arun Mishra inferred that Yaadraam must have been mistaken.

5. Justice Mishra completely ignored the official police photos of the crime scene, submitted in court, which shows the window opening as less than 3 inches or 3 inches. 

6. Justice Mishra ignored the evidence otherwise he would have faced the logical compulsion to contend that a bullet fired through the opening of car window can travel down, hit Pandya's testicles, and move up his body internally on its own. It seems Justice Mishra was misled. 

7. Believe it or not, Gujarat Home Minister was supposedly shot inside his own car in a part of the body which is full of veins but there was no blood found! 

8. The case will surely be examined rigorously by law students, scholars &  legislators. 

One is reminded of a book titled "Courts on Trial" authored by Judge & Jurist, Jerome Frank published in 1949.