The death of Anuradha Sharma, who was the complainant and prime witness in the Geetika Sharma suicide case, comes as the second setback to the prosecution after accused former Haryana Minister Gopal Kanda’s ex-aide Chanshivroop Singh allegedly fled to the United States.
To strengthen the prosecution case, Delhi Police had said it had no objection to making him an approver, and the court was on the verge of granting him conditional pardon when Chanshivroop went missing.
Subsequently, the pardon offer was withdrawn and on January 23 the police filed a supplementary charge sheet in which Chanshivroop was indicted for criminal conspiracy, passing of forged documents as genuine, and sending offensive messages of menacing nature under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act.
Meanwhile, District and Additional Sessions Judge S. K. Sarvaria has listed the case on February 22 to commence arguments on framing of charges.
Earlier, Mr. Sarvaria had planned to begin the arguments on January 11, but Kanda’s lawyers had objected. They said the forensic report was yet to come and that the charge sheet against Chanshivroop was also expected soon. The court then listed the case for arguments on January 24, but by then the charge sheet was filed and the defence sought more time claiming they were yet to be supplied the documents.
The first charge sheet in the case was filed on October 6. That charge sheet indicated the relevance of Chanshivroop and Anuradha to the case. Police said that Chanshivroop had been allegedly tasked by Kanda with sending fake e-mails and going to Dubai to pressure Geetika to quit her job at Emirates Airlines and rejoin Kanda’s company, MDLR Group. Regarding Anuradha, the police said that accused Aruna Chadha and Kanda had called her on August 3 and 4 and allegedly cast aspersions on her daughter Geetika’s character. The charge sheet said that these alleged calls ultimately drove Geetika to commit suicide.
During trial, both Chanshivroop and Anuradha would have been called by the prosecution as key witnesses to depose about the various allegations against Kanda and Chadha. But how their absence will now impact the trial, if charges are framed, remains to be seen.
