A court here granted bail to a man accused of murdering his daughter in a fit of rage and disposing of her body in a water body, saying there was a strong likelihood that the body recovered from the lake was not of the victim and it would not be prudent to deny him the relief pending further trial.
Additional Sessions Judge Vishal Gogne was hearing a case against Ravinder Chaudhary, who was accused of strangulating his daughter in a fit of rage on January 18, 2020.
According to the prosecution, the victim who had married against her father’s wishes had come to visit her parents. After the killing the victim’s body was thrown in a lake at Mohammadpur in Bulandshahr, from where it was recovered after 12 days, it said.
“The principal ground for seeking bail was the finding of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) through the DNA examination which found that the DNA profile of Ravinder Chaudhary as well as his wife did not match the DNA profile drawn from the tooth and bone of the body recovered from the lake,” the court said in an order passed on Saturday.
It noted the submission of Chaudhary’s counsel, according to which, as the alleged victim could not be identified as being the biological daughter of the accused, his detention could not be extended.
The counsel further said that all other evidence against Chaudhary was “entirely circumstantial and of a weak character”.
The court noted that it was found during the proceedings that the postmortem of another female was conducted on the same day at the same hospital where the autopsy of the victim was conducted.
The prosecution had raised the possibility of switching of biological samples between the two deceased females and as the viscera of the other deceased female was no longer preserved, the investigating officer (IO) repeated a DNA test, it said.
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“It was again found that the two DNA profiles did not match,” the court said, adding that “there is a strong likelihood that the body recovered from the lake was not of the daughter of the accused”, it said.
“While the prosecution may yet lead other evidence to establish the presence of the accused near the lake or photographic evidence to establish the identity of the victim, it does become imprudent to extend his custody pending further trial. More so when he has already remained in custody for about three and a half years,” the court said.
The court added that even the examination of the photographs by the FSL expert did not yield sufficient reference material to compare the admitted photographs of the daughter with the photographs of the decomposed body recovered from the lake.
Allowing the application, the court directed the accused to submit a personal bond of Rs 50,000.
The court posted the matter on December 21 for further proceedings.
