Party spokesperson Neelam Gorhe may have to submit voice samples to Pune police.
Two senior members of the Shiv Sena, including party spokesperson Neelam Gorhe, have suffered a setback in a case accusing them of conspiring to provoke rioting and arson in Pune in December 2010.
On Saturday, additional sessions judge Vinay Joshi dismissed the revision petition filed by Gorhe and Milind Narvekar, personal assistant to Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, with regards to the rioting case during the agitation over the removal of the controversial Dadoji Konddev statue from the historic Lal Mahal in the city.
Narvekar and Gorhe had filed the petition for setting aside the order passed by a lower court, directing the police to collect their voice samples for investigating the conspiracy.
In a case filed by the Pune police after tapping their telephonic conversation, Narvekar and Gorhe were accused of hatching a conspiracy to create a law-and-order problem in Pune during a bandh called by the Sena-BJP on December 28, 2010, following removal of the Konddev statue by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
In order to avoid possible arrest in the alleged crime, the two leaders surrendered before the court of judicial magistrate (first class), RL Wankhade, on December 30, 2010. On February 23, 2010, Wankhade allowed the Pune police to collect their voice samples.
However, both the Sena leaders skipped their date with the Pune police on February 26 last year to submit their voice test.
On March 14 last year, the Bund Garden police filed a 17-page chargesheet against them in the court of Wankhade.
Pleading for dismissal of the petition, special public prosecutor, Prakash Suryawanshi, told the court that voice samples of the two suspects were an integral part of the investigation. He also cited the judgment by the Bombay High Court in the case of fake stamp paper scam and told the court that as per article 20 (3) of the Constitution, no person accused of an offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.
On December 27, 2010, the Pune city police had tapped the cellphone and landline of Neelam Gorhe, after the Sena had called a Pune bandh the next day. According to the prosecution, Gorhe had received a call from Narvekar, who allegedly instructed her to stage-manage a riot and create panic in Pune on the bandh day. Narvekar allegedly instructed Gorhe to direct the party cadres to damage public buses in the main city areas, instigate violence and create terror in the people’s minds.
As a part of the voice test, the suspects are made to read books. The natural voice and pitch is recorded in the morning, afternoon and night and then they are sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh and to the Mumbai Forensic Science Laboratory for analysis.
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