The two prime accused in the murder case of 19-year-old Jhanvi Kukreja have been sent to judicial custody on Thursday.
Police claimed during the remand hearing that one of the accused, Shree Jogdhankar, 22, has a criminal past and is a hot-headed person, revealed probe. Both accused have been sent to jail, wherein Shree will be lodged in Taloja Jail while Diya Padalkar, 18, will be sent to Byculla Women’s Jail.
The court allowed the application made by Shree's lawyer for medical treatment and also asked them to provide him books in jail for his hotel management course.
During the remand hearing, investigation officer Gajanan Kabdule informed the court that Shree is a violent person and that there was a non-cognizable offence registered against him at Vakola Police Station last year in connection with assaulting a pan shop vendor. While putting forward this statement, Kabdule informed that Shree's friends said in their statement that he had assaulted a taxi driver. Shree's violent behaviour was also corroborated by Diya in her statement, which was informed to her by Jhanvi.
Meanwhile, advocate Trivankumar Karnani made submissions on behalf of Jhanvi's parents and said that maximum opportunity may be given to the police to complete custodial interrogation and they must not be incapacitated.
"I submitted that the contention of the IO is not tenable in the law. The so-called NC if any at Vakola would not have been an NC if he had assaulted, as the NC means that Vakola Police had not even taken cognizance of any offence," said Shree's legal counsel Mahesh Vaswani. However, none of these 3 episodes were mentioned in remand application, added Vaswani.
The arguments were also made that while 14 people were present in the party, police could not produce a single eyewitness or statement as ground in the remand application against Shree that states he assaulted Jhanvi. Police are still waiting for the forensic report of Shree and Diya and have not recovered any weapon or material from both the accused.
