Kashish Jain
The Court has denied bail to 22-year-old Shree Jogdhankar in the Jhanvi Kukreja murder case. The Sessions court stated in a detailed order that he had left the place of occurrence soon after the incident and the footage captured by the CCTV surveillance shows injuries in his back.
A few days earlier the court had refused the bail plea of the co-accused in the case, Diya Padalkar. The Court made similar observations for both. After considering the facts and the circumstances under which the act was committed the court stated:
“it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the applicant is falsely implicated in the case”
Jogdhankar is to prepare for examinations in the Hospitality course he is currently pursuing and for this, he is currently seeking interim bail of three months. The Court has stated that it is not empowered to grant the interim bail, particularly during the pendency of the regular bail plea.
Opposing his bail application in the murder of the 19-year-old Jhanvi Kukreja the Khar Police had earlier stated that he is better off prepping for exams in jail. His advocate, Mahesh Vaswani sought the temporary bail on his behalf.
In his plea, he stated that he was assaulted at the party and had to be hospitalized. The police raised the question of him lying about the nature of his injury and told the hospital authorities that he had fallen on the roads at Mahim. Further, the police asked why the accused had not approached the police if he had been assaulted at the party.
In his plea, the accused stated that if he had been involved in the crime, it would have come to the notice of the watchman, liftmen, or any of the residents. The police have answered this by stating that there was no liftman in the lift near the place of occurrence and the watchmen were at the gates outside the building.
According to this plea, Jogdhankar had sustained severe spinal injuries. Due to the nature of these injuries, he could suffer permanent paralysis or even death. The plea claimed that he had not been given adequate treatment in jail. The court deemed it necessary to mention that when he had been produced before the court during the pendency of his bail plea, the Court had noticed him to be physically fit.
Judge Umar stated:
“There is nothing on record to show that there is danger to the life of the applicant in jail due to injuries caused to him”
The 19-year old had been found lying in a pool of her blood on the ground floor of a Mumbai High Rise while her friends attended a New Year’s Party. Media reports have stated that both the accused in the murder were close friends of the victim and all three had gone to Bhagwati Heights to attend a New Year’s Party which had been organized by a friend. At said party, a scuffle broke out between the three, and Kukreja was eventually found dead.
While the mother of the victim believes the CCTV footage to be key evidence stating:
“I have been informed that in the lobby’s CCTV footage Shree was seen walking out at 2:15 am from the staircase (where Jhanvi was found murdered), and not from the lift.”
The Advocate representing the case of the accused has stated that the same footage is crucial in proving the discrepancies in the case against the client. He has stated:
“Sometime around 2 am my client left the party. He was spotted in the CCTV footage with an 8-inch-long injury on the rear side of his head. After leaving the building, he went to Sion Hospital to get his wounds treated. While he was still at the hospital, he received a call from another friend who said that Jhanvi was badly hurt and the matter has gone to the police. So, he went down to the Khar police station at around 5 am. He was arrested later that day,”
He has deemed his client physically big and unlikely to have caused those injuries to the victim
“Before going to the quarantine center, Jogdhankar was admitted to Cooper Hospital for injuries, including fractures on ribs and a dislocated spinal cord. All these injuries do not appear to be self-inflicted at all. So, apparently, something has happened to him,”
Both the accused are in judicial custody and the police have conducted an extensive investigation by recreating the scene with dummies. There were no reports of confession from either party. It has been stated that the Victim and Padalkar had been close friends and neighbors for 14 years.