New Delhi: A court here has allowed the Delhi Police to obtain voice samples of Amit Shukla, one of the accused in TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan murder case, in connection with an alleged extortion racket being operated from inside the Tihar prison.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vidya Prakash allowed the plea of Special Cell of Delhi Police to record the voice sample of Shukla and his co-accused Arun Kumar at CFSL (CBI).
"Considering the entire facts and circumstances of the case including the nature of offences alleged to have been committed in this case, court does not find any reason to decline the application (of the police)," the CMM said.
While directing the Director of Central Forensic Science Laboratory CFSL to fix a date and time for obtaining the voice sample of the accused, the court asked it to take "all possible precautions while obtaining the voice sample to rule out any possibility of tampering or interpolation."
The police plea for voice sample was opposed by Shukla`s counsel Deepak Sharma, who had argued that the probe agency should have got the samples while his client was in police custody but it had failed to do so.
Sharma`s arguments, however, were rejected by the court.
Early this year, police had placed two mobile numbers on interception on the basis of an information that they were being used by some robbers or gangsters.
The intercepted calls revealed that Shukla, who was lodged in Jail no. 3 at Tihar, was calling one Rajender, a resident of Vaishali, and trying to allegedly extort Rs 1 lakh from him.
Shukla is accused in murder case of Vishwanathan who was shot at in a moving car in South Delhi on September 30, 2008. The Delhi Police had arrested five persons, Shukla, Ajay Sethi, Ravi Kapoor, Baljit Malik and Ajay Kumar. Apart from various provisions of the IPC, the accused were also booked under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In the extortion case, the police had earlier told the court that on continuous monitoring, one of the numbers was found being used by inmates of Tihar Jail including Shukla while the other number was being used by Arun Kumar and both the numbers were in contact with each other.
On January 24, Rajender had registered a case in Crime Branch Delhi which was later transfered to the Special Cell as it had already intercepted the mobile numbers, the court was told.
Arun, who had allegedly extorted Rs 50,000 from Rajender on January 25, was nabbed by police on January 27.
Arun disclosed that while working as a compounder in dispensary at Tihar Jail, he came in contact with Shukla and developed friendship with him. He also procured a mobile phone and SIM for Shukla from which he used to make extortion calls.
Police said on January 25 Arun had received a call from Shukla directing him to collect money from Rajender and Rs 44,000 was recovered by the probe agency at his instance.
PTI
