Actor faces perjury trial in Jessica Lall murder case

IANS/New Delhi

The Delhi High Court yesterday ordered that a perjury case be registered against Bollywood actor Shayan Munshi and ballistic expert Prem Sagar Manocha for turning hostile during their deposition in the murder trial of model Jessica Lall here.

A division bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and G P Mittal also discharged 17 other witnesses in the case.

The accused could be jailed for up to seven years under the perjury case.

The court in the order said: “....the Registrar General of this court to file a complaint before the competent court having jurisdiction to consider and take action under Section 340 CrPC against the respondents (Munshi and Manocha) in the above applications.”

The court referred the issue of witness protection to the chief justice to be converted into a public interest litigation (PIL).

The court also directed the Delhi government to “create witness protection policy within 10 weeks.”

Lall was shot dead at Tamarind Court, a restaurant owned by socialite Bina Ramani, in south Delhi’s Mehrauli area on the night of April 29, 1999.

She was shot dead by Manu Sharma, son of Haryana Congress leader Venod Sharma after she refused to serve him a drink.

The bench pronounced its order two years after reserving the judgment on May 4, 2011.

The court had taken cognizance of the matter and sought to prosecute for perjury a record 19 witnesses who turned hostile during the trial, questioning the prosecution how so many of its witnesses could change their testimony.

The trial court had acquitted Manu Sharma while the high court awarded him life imprisonment. Actor Munshi had lodged the first information report in the case.

The Supreme Court in April 2010 upheld the high court’s order in the murder case and also endorsed its findings on the issue of perjury.

Munshi, the complainant in the case, urged the court not to prosecute him and said he could not be termed hostile as even the Supreme Court had used part of his deposition in convicting the accused.

He had disowned the complaint during the trial, saying he “did not know Hindi.”

Socialite Andleeb Sehgal, ballistic expert Roop Singh, electrician Shiv Shankar Dass and eyewitness Jagannath Jha are among the 19 people against whom the court pronounced verdict.

The prosecution had told the high court to refer 19 of the 31 hostile witnesses, including Munshi, to the magisterial court for their trial on charges of perjury.