Satisfied with the investigation conducted thus far by the local police into TV actor Pratyusha Banerjee’s suicide case, the Bombay high court on Thursday refused to transfer the probe into her death
Satisfied with the investigation conducted thus far by the local police into TV actor Pratyusha Banerjee’s suicide case, the Bombay high court on Thursday refused to transfer the probe into her death to the crime branch. However, the bench kept the petition filed by Pratyusha’s mother, Shoma Banerjee, pending, and asked the investigating officer to file a report on further investigation on the next date of hearing.
A division bench of Justice N.H. Patil and Justice A.M. Badar asked Ms Banerjee’s lawyer, K.T. Thomas, why the petitioner was finding the investigation “unfair” and how would arrest of the accused make it fair.
Advocate Thomas then told the court that there were numerous things like Pratyusha’s being beaten up by the accused on several occasions in the past and the accused’s alleged use of her credit card and withdrawal of money from her account into which the police had not investigated. He alleged that the police recorded Pratyusha’s mother’s statement on April 5 while Pratyusha died on April 1. He claimed that the accused and Pratyusha’s live-in partner, Rahul Raj Singh, took her body to a hospital in Andheri from Goregaon and later, ran away from there too. Mr Thomas alleged that Bangur Nagar police purposely delayed registering of FIR, and all these things amounted to unfair investigation. The lawyer clarified that they were not forcing for arrest of Rahul but only wanted a fair investigation.
After chief public prosecutor, Sandeep Shinde, gave details of the investigation done so far on the court’s instructions, the bench, after hearing both sides, said it was satisfied with the probe by the police so far and did not feel the need to transfer the case to crime branch at this stage.
