Seven years after woman’s body found at Oval Maidan, 2 acquitted for lack of evidence

One of the main evidence that the police claimed against the accused was CCTV footage. The court, however, said that there were several inconsistencies in the digital evidence, including a change in size from those seized earlier. “This inconsistency further strengthens the suspicion that substituted CDs or DVDs were admitted instead of those originally mentioned. Consequently, the CDs in question cannot be regarded as genuine,” additional sessions judge Avinash P. Kulkarni said.

The court noted that there was no evidence to show that Jahid was seen at the Oval Maidan on the night of the incident. “No independent eyewitnesses at Oval Maidan on the date in question were located or examined…None of them had seen any incident. Oval Maidan is an open, public place with large number of people passing. Perhaps, there may have been eye-witnesses to the said
offence, but none was found. This itself shows that no incident took place at the said time. The lack of any corroboration strongly suggests that no incident occurred,” the court said.

The court also found irregularities in the recovery of the knife, stating that it was from an open place, accessible to the public and hence cannot be said to be reliable. A phone allegedly belonging to the victim claimed to have been found from the accused was also not identified by the victim’s family.

One of the witnesses the police relied on was a sugarcane juice stall owner near Oval Maidan, who police claimed had seen Nasreen and Salman together on the day of the incident. The court accepted the contention of the defence lawyers Wahab Khan and Gaurav Bhawnani that the witness had admitted that Salman was unknown to him and that he has approximately 50 to 60 customers at his stall daily and it is difficult to remember an unknown customer.