Challenging the acquittal of all nine accused in the Jessica Lal murder case, the Delhi police filed an appeal in the Delhi High Court on Monday.
The appeal stated that the acquittal of the nine accused, by Additional Sessions Judge S L Bhayana, was a grave error on the part of the trial court, which had failed to take into consideration the circumstantial evidence gathered by the prosecution.
The appeal comes three weeks after the Patiala House court acquitted Haryana minister's son Manu Sharma, former Rajya Sabha MP D P Yadav's son Vikas Yadav and seven others of all charges in the 1999 murder of the ramp model.
Others acquitted were Amardeep Singh Gill alias Tony and Aloke Khanna (both senior officials in a leading soft drink company), Shyam Sunder Sharma (relative of former President Shankar Dayal Sharma), Harvinder Chopra, Vikas Gill, Raja Chopra, and former Indian cricketer Yograj Singh.
Two others - Ravinder Krishan Sudan alias Titu and Dhanraj - were declared proclaimed offenders by the court.
According to the prosecution, Lal was shot dead by Sharma at the Tamarind Court, a restaurant owned by socialite Bina Ramani at Qutub Colonnade, south Delhi, on the night of April 29-30, 1999. The others were accused of criminal conspiracy, harbouring a suspect and destruction of evidence.
However, during the course of the seven-year long trial, three key eyewitnesses -- model-turned-actor Shayan Munshi, Karan Rajput and Shiv Das -- had turned hostile, which dented the prosecution's case considerably.
In his 179-page judgement, ASJ Bhayana had hauled up the Delhi police for its shoddy investigation in the case, and said the prosecution had 'miserably failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt against any of the accused'.
The court also concluded that 'all the links in the chain of evidence produced by the prosecution were either missing or broken'. Further, it said the police 'had decided to fix the accused in this case even though there was no evidence available with them about his (Manu's) involvement'.
Complete coverage: The Jessica Lal murder case