Nearly three years after a trial court found former IPS officer RK Sharma guilty of murdering journalist Shivani Bhatnagar, the Delhi high court on Wednesday acquitted him and two others — Bhagwan Sharma and Satya Prakash — of the charge.

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The court cited lack of evidence for giving them the benefit of doubt. However, the conviction of Pradeep Sharma, who killed the journalist, was upheld.  

Bhatnagar was a senior journalist with The Indian Express when she was found murdered in her East Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999. “The quality of evidence before us is not of high calibre,” a division bench of justices BD Ahmed and Manmohan Singh said while acquitting RK Sharma. “Judges, like other human beings, also have suspicions, but judges, unlike others who are free to arrive at their own conclusions, cannot and do not convict on the basis of mere suspicion,” the court said in its 84-page judgment.

“The prosecution has to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The prosecution, in our view, failed to do so as far as appellants RK Sharma, Bhagwan Sharma and Satya Prakash are concerned.”

The Delhi police said it would challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court. “This is a strange order. How can a person kill anyone without any motive? I fail to understand how the killer’s conviction was upheld but the people who hatched the conspiracy got a clean chit,” said Pawan Sharma, standing counsel for the Delhi police.

The court expressed its helplessness while acquitting the trio. “Although the motive behind Pradeep Sharma killing Bhatnagar is unclear and has not been established, we have found, on the basis of overwhelming scientific and circumstantial evidence, that he was the person who killed the journalist. Did he act alone? Did he act at the behest of RK Sharma and the other appellants or did he act on the insistence of someone else? These are questions which we cannot answer on the basis of the material before us,” the court observed.

A Delhi trial court in March 2008 awarded the life sentence to RK Sharma for murdering Bhatnagar. The senior police officer, who worked in the prime minister’s office, appealed against the verdict in the high court. He is lodged in Tihar jail for the past nine years. The trial court judge had said RK Sharma did not deserve the death penalty because of his “excellent” service record.