Cops ask Govt to appoint special PP
The Mumbai police have requested Maharashtra government to appoint a Special Public Prosecutor (PP), Raja Thakare to represent the case of the slain physiotherapist. She was brutally killed and raped by a drug addict Debashish Dhara (27) in her house last December.
A highly-placed source in the Commissioner of Police office and Home Department of Maharashtra government has told the Free Press Journal that Mumbai police chief Datta Padsalgikar had written a letter on February 15, requesting the Additional Chief Secretary (Home Dept) Sudhir Shrivastava to appoint Thakare to represent the police. However, Thakare has not been informed since then.
“The Mumbai police had asked for my consent to represent the case long back. There is no communication with them thereafter,” Thakare told the Free Press Journal.
Sources told the Free Press Journal that the police expect to receive the government’s response by the middle of next week.
Dhara, who at present is imprisoned in Arthur Road jail, was arrested from West Midnapore district of West Bengal on February 29.
Investigators are also preparing a 250-300-page chargesheet, which is likely to be submitted in the court by March 20. “The chargesheet is being prepared on the technical evidences we have collected from the crime scene. Two reports from Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) are yet to come. Once those two FSL reports come, we will submit the chargesheet,” the Investigating Officer Mahadev Nimbalkar told the Free Press Journal.
“We will first show the copy of the chargesheet to Thakare for any correction and then it will finally be submitted in the court,” said Nimbalkar.
He added that it is a rape and murder case so it will be heard in the fast-track court and hence the procedures are being followed accordingly.
The Mumbai police interrogated almost all the history sheeters form Vile Parle (East) and adjoining areas but they could not get any clue of Dhara, who is said to have been roaming freely for more than two and half months in the same neighbourhood.
Dhara fled the city for his hometown in West Midnapore after he saw his photograph published in the media. His face was flashed as the prime suspect in the case. A grainy photograph grab taken from the Close Circuit Television (CCTV) footage showed his face. In the CCTV footage Dhara was seen entering and leaving the house of the physiotherapist that made him the prime suspect.
Dhara is a drug addict who lives in a rented room in a chawl in the locality where the physiotherapist lived with her parents and one younger sister.
The investigators are preparing 250-300 pages chargesheet which is expected to be submitted by March 20.