An accused in the Jhanvi Kukreja murder, 22-year-old Shree Jogdhankar, in his bail application filed on Monday before a sessions court has said that if police’s allegations are taken at face value, at worst it is a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and not a case of murder.
He sought temporary bail for three months as he is a BSc Hospitality and Hotel Administration student and has his final exams due in March. Jogdhankar through his advocate Mahesh Vasvani said in his plea that “the incident is clearly alleged to have happened on the spur of the moment” and that it is of a personal and not a social or public crime. He also denied that it was “premeditated” or with knowledge.
He said he is innocent and on mere suspicion that he is the boyfriend of Jhanvi he is arrested. He further said that he was himself brutally beaten up by some persons at the party and had got badly injured.
The plea also questioned how nobody in the building heard the cries of Jhanvi nor were there any witnesses. “This clearly speaks of the frame up of the applicant,” it said and added that the real culprits are being shielded.
Jogdhankar’s co-accused Diya Padalkar had filed a bail plea recently in which she had claimed that she was herself injured due to a fall and in hospital during the alleged incident and came to know of it from the police.
The Khar police had opposed Padalkar’s plea and told the court in a reply it filed, that the murder was violent and intentional wherein both accused helped each other.
Jhanvi's mother's advocate Trivankumar Karnani said that Jogdhankar's plea suppresses material facts such as his criminal history and has the motive to mislead the court.
