Bhatnagar murder: Prosecution says accused was friend of deceased

The prosecution in journalist Shivani Bhatnagar murder case on Monday told a city court that the deceased was a “personal friend” of key accused and former IPS officer R K Sharma, says a Press Trust of India (PTI) report in the Times of India.

Special Public Prosecutor S K Saxena, in his arguments before Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, said Sharma had made a “false statement” before the court that he had family relations with the scribe.

Arguing that the deceased’s husband had never accompanied Shivani to visit Sharma’s house, the prosecutor said “…what kind of family relations they had when they had never together been to his (Sharma’s) house.”

Saxena, who read from various testimonies, said while her husband had met Sharma only once, Shivani’s sister did not even know the accused.

The prosecutor, who was putting up his arguments based upon Sharma’s telephone conversations with Shivani, alleged the former IPS officer had a “motive” to kill the journalist as she was getting possessive towards him.

He also claimed while Shivani “never wanted to part with the company of R K Sharma”, the accused planned her murder so as to get rid of his relationship with her.

In a bid to further prove Sharma’s intimacy with Shivani, he cited excerpts from the testimony of the deceased’s journalist friend Saijal Shah stating that the deceased during one of her professional visits to London had revealed her affair with the accused.