Delhi court asks police to respond to 16 Dec gangrape accused plea

New Delhi: A fast track-court today sought a reply from the Delhi police on the plea of one of the December 16 gangrape accused seeking permission to undergo lie detector test claiming he is innocent and has been falsely implicated. Accused Vinay Sharma, who along with five others, allegedly gangraped a 23-year-old girl in a moving bus here, filed the plea before Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna who asked the Delhi police to respond to his plea by tomorrow.  Vinay in his application, filed through his counsel A P Singh, said he is a student of BA first year and was working with a gym to earn his livelihood. “The accused (Vinay) has been falsely implicated in the case and he is in judicial custody since December last year without any proper reason…,” he said, claiming Vinay is innocent and has no any previous criminal record in which he was convicted. The lawyer also said Vinay was not in the bus on December 16, 2012 night. He was at a music function in South Delhi along with other co-accused Pawan Gupta and his friend. He also said the prosecution story is “totally false and fabricated” and made by them under government pressure as the public came on the road due to the brutal assault on the girl and her male friend by the six accused persons, which also led to the victim’s death on December 29. However, the accused’s move was opposed by Special Public Prosecutor Daya Krishnan who said Vinay’s application is untenable and should be rejected. The judge today also recorded the statement of the Safdarjung Hospital doctor who was in-charge of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where the victim was undergoing treatment for ten days. The doctor, who had also accompanied the victim to a Singapore hospital on December 26 night along with four other doctors and her family members, deposed in the court that the the condition of the victim was serious and the infection has also spread in her body due to injuries caused on her. “It is wrong to suggest that the victim was not having septicimia till December 21, 2012. I saw her on December 17 morning, she was already in septic shock due to her injuries and she was on injection dopamine infusion to maintain her blood pressure,” the doctor said during cross examination by accused Pawan’s counsel, Vivek Sharma. The doctor further deposed that the patient was monitored by a team of doctors. “There was no head of the said team of doctors. In fact, each and every member of the team was a specialist in his own respective filed,” he added. He told the court that since the victim was in critical condition, she was immediately rushed to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore to “manage the critical condition and to let her come out of it and at a later stage, to consider her for transplant of the organs”. The court is at present conducting proceedings against four of the accused in the case in which it has recorded the statements of 65 prosecution witnesses. With the proceedings against the main accused Ram Singh having been abated after his death on March 11, the remaining four adult accused Mukesh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Singh and Pawan Gupta are facing trial in the case for rape and murder of the girl. The sixth is a juvenile and is facing proceedings before the Juvenile Justice Board. PTI