Anti-Terrorism Squad Commissioner Rakesh Maria was on Tuesday examined in the Neeraj Grover murder case. Maria,who was the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) at the time of the murder in May 2008 and had conducted a press conference detailing the alleged plot,was called as a defence witness.
During the deposition,Maria told the court that the Crime Branch got involved in the case after the parents of Grover,who was missing at the time,came to him around May 10-11.
“Seeing them cry,I directed the Crime Branch to assist the Malad police station in the investigations,” he said. He,however,denied that Grover’s father Amarnath Grover had come to him because the police had not been able to make any headway in the case. “He (Amarnath Grover) wanted the expertise of the Crime Branch to trace his son,” Maria said.
When the defence repeatedly asked Maria if the investigating officer in the case had complained to him about any misreporting by the media,he said,“If I start clarifying,then my day and my entire career will go into it,“ he said. “The officer would have been busy with the investigations to worry about what came out in the media,” he added.
Maria’s deposition lasted for over two hours during which he told the court that the information disseminated to the media at the press conference on the evening May 21,2008 was provided to him by the Malad police which was initially investigating the case. The defence lawyers Sharif Shaikh and Abdul Vahab Khan tried to imply in their questioning that the police had concocted the case and hence the information was given out to the media,even before co-accused Emile Jerome was arrested.
According to the police,Jerome and his girl friend Kannada actor Maria Susairaj had allegedly killed Grover by stabbing him to death at Susairaj’s house in Malad on May 7,2008. They allegedly cut the body into pieces with a kitchen knife and disposed it off at the jungles of Manor.
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