Khar New Year eve murder: Diya files for bail, says police planted evidence to link her

Diya Padalkar, a co-accused in the murder of her childhood friend Jhanvi Kukreja, filed a bail application before a sessions court, on Tuesday, alleging that the Khar police has deliberately planted evidence to link her to the crime.

Referring to the chargesheet filed recently in the case, the plea says the prosecution’s case is that a bedsheet and pillow were found from the house of the party host Yash Ahuja’s home with blood stains. The DNA in the sample matches that of Jhanvi and Diya. It contends that the bedsheet was contaminated by the police to link Diya to the crime.

The plea, filed through her advocate Ashok Mishra, states further that the police was desperate to show that Diya was in her full senses when she committed the offence, that they have got the urine test recommended by the doctor cancelled and only conducted a blood test for tracing alcohol after 43 to 44 hours of the incident. Police seem to be well aware, it said, that a blood test would not show alcohol after 44 hours had elapsed, while a urine test would have detected alcohol for upto three to five days.

It further said that, on the perusal of the chargesheet, Diya’s actual role in the offence is not revealed. If the statements of the witnesses are to be relied on, then at the time of the murder, Diya was either sleeping on the terrace or in the bedroom of Ahuja.

It contended that the prosecution has not shown any motive for the crime and pointed out that the applicant did not escape or attempt to escape from the scene of crime, a proof of her innocence, and that she was herself injured and hospitalised.

Diya and her friend Shree Jogdhankar have been charged with the murder of their common friend Jhanvi Kukreja. The chargesheet states that Jhanvi, who was romantically involved with Shree, had confronted the duo after seeing Shree get physical with Diya at the party. A fight had ensued in which the duo had violently assaulted her, with her fighting back. It was from their banging her head on a staircase railing that she had suffered a skull fracture, resulting in death.