Eight years on, CBI to probe 2017 hotel manager death case after Delhi High Court order

On November 27, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela accepted the plea of Arnav’s mother and transferred the case to the CBI, citing the police’s probe as “lackadaisical”.

While transferring the case to CBI, the court made observations regarding the police investigation and said, “Investigations lack bona fide and appear to have been conducted myopically, that too, predicated only on the theory of suicide as stated by the woman without applying its investigative or analytical and scientific mind to the circumstances noted in the preceding paragraphs.”

According to Arnav’s mother’s plea, the local police initially investigated the case under the assumption of suicide, which resulted in a miscarriage of justice. Only after the year of the death, the crime branch registered a case of murder.

Key directions

• CBI to take up a fresh investigation into the case under which the death of the deceased occurred, and take necessary consequential steps in accordance with the law.
• Police the any other agency to submit the entire records and the evidence gathered till date to the CBI within four weeks from the date.
• CBI, apart from conducting the aforesaid investigations, would also require to conduct an enquiry into the lapses, if any, by the officers of the Delhi Police conducting the investigations, and if any deliberate act for such omission or commission is revealed, a report be generated and furnished to the petitioner as also the
• Commissioner of Police, who may take appropriate disciplinary action, if so required.
• Police authorities and other investigating agencies should extend all cooperation to the CBI in respect of any requirement relating to this case.
  ‘CBI directed to complete the investigations with expedition.

Findings

The court had observed that it was the bounden duty of the investigating agencies to, at the first instance, rule out or eliminate any offence which may be attracted in the given facts and circumstances of a particular case.

“In the present case, even if one may presume that an offence under Section 302 IPC, in all probability, may not find a foundation, but whether the purported suicide is voluntary or there could be an element of abetment, has not at all been looked into by the prosecution. Rather, that aspect was completely ignored, willfully or otherwise,” it noted.

Arguments

According to the plea, at the time of death, the woman with whom her son was allegedly in a relationship was with him, but the probe agencies investigated the case under the assumption of suicide and not murder.

Senior advocate Siddharth Aggarwal, who represented the mother, argued that the assumption of suicide, which formed the basis of the investigation commenced and concluded by the prosecution, had resulted in a miscarriage of justice.

He contended that there is no credible knowledge, information or even evidence collected by the investigating authorities to reach this assumption of suicide from the very inception of the investigation.

He pointed to the discrepancies in the woman’s version, the time of the discovery of the body, and photographs of the crime scene, including the non-registration of FIR by the investigative authorities.

The mother’s plea said that the police faltered in their investigation since they “presumed” that the death of her son was suicide, and not murder.

It added that such an assumption emanated from the version given by the woman with whom her son was allegedly in a relationship, and she was the only person admittedly present in the flat when he committed suicide.

The petition called the investigation “unfair, tainted, mala fide, and smacks of foul play”, requiring a CBI probe.

Government counsel Anmol Sinha, on the other hand, refuted the allegations and contentions of the petitioner.

Sinha submitted that the version put forth by the petitioner was a result of an imagination far from the truth and devoid of any merit on account of lack of evidence, whether oral or documentary.