Supreme Court refuses to hear plea of Haldiram’s owner (Second Lead)

NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court Monday declined to entertain a petition by Haldiram’s Group owner Prabhu Shankar Agarwal, seeking bail after being convicted for conspiring to kill a tea stall owner in Kolkata.

The vacation bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Deepak Verma and comprising Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan instead asked the petitioner to move Calcutta High Court for appropriate relief.

The court said the high court will decide the matter without being influenced by its earlier observations.

Agarwal had in the past moved the high court for the suspension of his sentence. He has now came to the Supreme Court challenging the high court verdict.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior counsel U.U. Lalit said his client could not be booked under section 307 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) dealing with charges of attempt to murder as he was not even present at the spot of the alleged crime.

When Justice Verma told the senior counsel to go back before the high court and revive their earlier application, he said that whatever grounds for the suspension of sentence were available have already been pleaded before the high court.

He told the court that there were no new grounds to agitate before the high court.

Assailing the high court verdict, the senior counsel said that it never happened in criminal jurisprudence that a person was charged under section A but was convicted under section B. Such a situation, he said, was strange to criminal jurisprudence.

“I was not even charged under section 307 and was not even present on the spot (of crime),” counsel said.

When the court repeated that petitioner should move the high court again, the senior counsel said that he would move the high court “provided the court (apex court) gives me full liberty. Otherwise I am completely bound by the high court verdict”.

Agarwal had hired a contract killer to kill tea stall owner Pramod Sharma Thakur, who had refused to remove his stall which was blocking the entrance of a large confectionery shop the businessman was about to open in the Burrabazar area of central Kolkata.

The contract killer, Gopal Tiwari, and three of his henchmen shot at and injured Thakur March 30, 2005.

Agarwal and the four others were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Kolkata court in January.