As a vociferous ‘Justice for Ruchika’ campaign is on full throttle, Himanshu Sabharwal has moved the Supreme Court demanding justice
for his father Prof H S Sabharwal who was beaten to death allegedly by ABVP activists in an Ujjain College in 2006.
He has taken the unusual step to move the apex court directly against the trial court’s decision to acquit all the accused and demanded that the case be re-opened and investigation be carried out by an independent agency.
In the writ petition filed through counsel Niraj Gupta, Himanshu said it was a traversity of justice that took place at the Nagpur court. The SC had in 2008 transferred the proceedings from an Ujjain court to Nagpur after accepting his apprehension that fair trial was not possible in Madhya Pradesh as it was ruled by ABVP’s parent political party BJP.
The petitioner alleged that despite a fair attempt by the apex court to meet the ends of justice, it was justice which was sacrificed as even police officials, who were cited as witnesses in the case, turned hostile to facilitate acquittal of the accused persons.
Prof Sabharwal’s son explained his direct flight to the apex court without moving the High Court saying it was the SC which had monitored the probe into the lynching incident before transferring the trial to a Nagpur court on March 12, 2008.
The Nagpur court had in July last year acquitted six ABVP activists accused in the case of murder of Prof Sabharwal for lack of evidence. The accused were Vimal Tomar, Pankaj Mishra, Vimal Rajoria, Shashi Ranjan Akela, Hemant Dubey and Sudhir Yadav. The court had observed that the prosecution had “miserably failed” to prove the case against the accused.