FAMILIAR TERRAIN: Sharma en route to Tihar Jail

Confidence can so easily be misplaced. After interrogating igp R.K. Sharma for 10 days, the Delhi Police say they have worked out the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case. But in the days to come, they may well find the going more than just tough in the courts of law.

Last week Sharma was sent to Tihar Jail by a Delhi court after public prosecutor S.K. Saxena claimed that the police no longer needed to have him in their custody. JCP (Crime) U.K. Katna heading the investigation said, "Sharma has admitted to his involvement in the murder and a disclosure statement has been made before the investigating officer."

The police, however, know well that the statement itself has no evidentiary value and Sharma, who surrendered on September 27 before a magistrate in Ambala (after remaining absconding for three months), has been able to play the waiting game well. The police sought a custodial interrogation to establish that he paid the killer and to recover certain sensitive government and other documents. They said he had to be taken outstation for questioning. But Sharma was not taken anywhere, and at the end of the 10-day custody the police did not come any closer to ascertaining that money or documents had changed hands.

"Police must know presumptions do not decide criminal cases." R.K. Naseem, R.K. Sharma's lawyer

Sharma was confronted with records of telephone calls made by him to Shivani, and to his accomplices just before her murder, of his stay at Delhi's Ashok Hotel and of a flight taken by some of the accused from Delhi to Mumbai a day after the murder. "In the end we are morally convinced that he hatched the murder plot," says DCP (Crime) M.S. Upadhye.

But moral conviction is not enough to secure a conviction in court. Although senior police officials are tight-lipped about the contents of the chargesheet they will file in court before October 27, several gaping holes in the prosecution's case have already showed up.

Apart from extracting confessions from the six accused, the case has not really moved forward since February-March 1999, when the police came to know about Sharma's relationship with the Indian Express journalist.

The first inroads into the case was made by the then DCP (Crime) Karnal Singh who established the intimate link between the two. Singh had questioned Sharma, who then admitted to his relationship with Shivani. Singh produced records from the taxi agency that had provided cars to ferry Shivani from her apartment to Ashok Hotel where she met Sharma during his visits from Mumbai. Shivani's husband Rakesh Bhatnagar had also told the police that he used to drop Shivani at "shady hotels" on Asaf Ali Road to meet Sharma, a fact that he disapproved of.

The record of calls made by Sharma to Shivani (on her residence phone and mobile phone) from Ashok Hotel and from his Mumbai office were shown to him and he had admitted to having known her as more than just a friend. Some of the calls were made very late in the evening. As early as March 1999 the police knew of Sharma's almost daily telephonic contact with Sri Bhagwan, and the other links in the chain. Fingerprints were taken from the scene of crime-from wedding invitation card, a box of sweets, tea cups, glasses-and "matched", but no arrests were made, and curiously, for three years the police deliberately soft-pedalled the case.

Now while the confessions have little value as evidence in the court, several doubts and uncomfortable questions have cropped up.

In 1999, did the fingerprints found at the scene of crime match Pradeep Sharma's? If they did, then why wasn't he arrested immediately?

How can the police prove that the fingerprints lifted from the scene of crime were not tampered with during the interim period?

What prompted the police to detain and question Sri Bhagwan in July 2002? Since 1999 they had known that Sri Bhagwan and R.K. Sharma were relatives and in constant touch before and after the murder.

If the police indeed have records of incriminating conversation between Sri Bhagwan and the other accused, then why was no request made in a court of law to obtain voice samples?

The police claim that Sharma was in Pune on the day of the murder, and received a call on a businessman friend's mobile (9822028128) from a public telephone booth in Gurgaon. But this alone does not establish that the murderer/s called the conspirator.

The police claim that a gold chain, a camera and some sensitive papers were removed from Shivani's east Delhi apartment. None of these was found even though the police demanded the remand of the accused on the ground that these had to be recovered.

The police could not prove that money was paid by Sharma to the accused when they went to Mumbai a day after Shivani's murder. Nor of any payment before the murder.

"Every theory stops itself," says Pandit R.K. Naseem, Sharma's counsel. "Why would Sharma introduce such close relatives in a murder case?" he asks. The police, however, have a theory on why Sri Bhagwan agreed to help out Sharma. They say Sri Bhagwan knew and was in awe of Sharma who was an SSP in Rohtak when his own father Omkar Sharma served as an SHO in Gurgaon in the 1980s. Sri Bhagwan once got into trouble with the local police when he had an affair with a head constable's wife and was roughed up. Then Sharma had used his clout to bail him out. An indebted Sri Bhagwan readily asked Satya Prakash from Unth Lodha in Jhajjar to find a "man for the job" at Sharma's behest.

"The orders came in the last week of December 1998," says Qamar Ahmed, additional commissioner (Crime). "By then, Shivani had become very demanding and the pressure on Sharma was unbearable," he adds. The police are investigating a farmhouse investment by Sri Bhagwan at Ranipur village in Bundi, Madhya Pradesh.

The police say that 10 days before the murder, Sharma, on a business trip to Delhi, had asked Shivani to meet him at Ashok Hotel. What she didn't know was that he had also invited Sri Bhagwan and his contacts to take a good look at her. They later followed her to her apartment. In some ways, that journey was to mark the beginning of the end.

In custody, there were moments when a laconic Sharma would sit on the floor staring at a constable sitting on a chair, smoking a bidi and keeping a watch on him. That may or may not have psychologically affected the former IGP (Prisons). But by the end of his custody it was precious little he gave away. In fact the police now have more questions than answers in the case than before they had him in custody. As Naseem says, "The police must realise that criminal cases are not decided on presumptions. There are far too many in this particular one."

That is why the confidence of having worked out the case could so easily be misplaced.