A Delhi court on Monday extended the custody of Jitender Singh Tomar by another four days after the Delhi Police said that the former law minister needs to be taken to Bundelkhand University to ascertain facts about his “fabricated” migration certificate.
Tomar was produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Preeti Parewa on Monday after the expiry of his two-day police remand. The police sought extension of his remand by eight more days, stating that he was also needed to be taken to Munger, Bihar to verify the address mentioned in his migration certificate from Bundelkhand University.
Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava said that last two days of the police custody were second Saturday and Sunday and did not serve any purpose during their probe as the colleges were closed.
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Meanwhile , the police teams raided Tomar’s south Delhi home and the institute in Outer Delhi run by Tomar’s “female friend” on Monday. “We raided his home, searching for documents but found no incriminating evidence. We have seized his computer hard discs for further search. We have got leads that he was running a coaching institute in association with a female friend,” a police source said.
Police also raided the coaching institute in Outer Delhi. Tomar’s female friend who runs the institute is absconding.
“The institute was locked. But when we got in, we found no documents with a link to Tomar’s fake degrees or to prove that he had been partly running the institute. We have not been able to trace the woman either,” a senior officer said.
‘Illegal’ police counsel replaced
The police on Monday withdrew the counsel “appointed by the Lt-governor” in the Tomar bail hearing, stating that an additional public prosecutor will now be representing the prosecution.
The police told the court that Atul Kumar Shrivastava, who has been appointed by the Delhi government, will now be handling the case. The move comes after Delhi Police was questioned by Tomar’s counsel, in the last two hearings, about the locus of the a “LG-appointed counsel” to defend the police over the regular public prosecutor, in the absence of a official “gazette notification”.
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On Monday, when Shrivastava told the court of his new role, the counsel for Tomar argued that “they do not have any problem with a Shrivastava’s appointment as APP” but that the “magisterial court’s were misled in the past three hearings as the earlier appointment by the L-G was illegal”.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
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