How calls didn't connect

Former IPS officer Ravi Kant Sharma walked free from Tihar on Wednesday riding high on the "benefit of doubt" . Even if the cop himself had tampered with crucial phone records or somebody else destroyed evidence at his behest, the Delhi high court felt evidence against Sharma was "unreliable" .
This irony lies at the heart of the high court order that explains why former cop R K Sharma was acquitted in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case.The court found that call records placed as evidence by the Delhi Police was tampered with — details were blanked out and new ones introduced.
These records, the police claimed, showed killer Pradeep Sharma, was constantly in touch on phone with co-accused Sri Bhagwan on the day Shivani was killed. Sri Bhagwan was passing on instructions from R K Sharma to Pradeep, the police said. This proves the link between Sharma and the killer, the police told the court.
However, the police claim withered under the court's minute scrutiny of phone records. The entire prosecution case crumbled as it failed to prove that calls were exchanged between the landline phone used by Pradeep and Sri Bhagwan's moble on the day of murder. Another blow to the prosecution's case came when records of MTNL showed the landline didn't belong to Pradeep, but to one Ram Phal Sharma of Dichaon Kalan village.
Once the most direct and basic link between Pradeep and Sri Bhagwan collapsed, the court chose not to entertain circumstantial evidence surrounding the alleged conspirators — Pradeep is co-accused Satya Prakash's nephew; Prakash was a tenant at a house owned by Sri Bhagwan , who in turn was son of a police officer who was Sharma's subordinate. Similarly, the court ignored the prosecution's claim that the motive behind Shivani's murder was her illicit relationship with R K Sharma. The court focused on how feeble the most crucial evidence was. "We are of the view that the exhibit PW 135/28 (call records) is not a direct computer printout of the data available in the computers or servers of the telephone company. The impression we get is that the data has been tampered with, date and time sequence has been altered and there is clear indication of tampering and manipulation ," the bench observed in its verdict. It added that even if the tampering was done at the instance of R K Sharma, who was a powerful police officer or at the instance of someone else, "fact remains that the records are unreliable" . Police had claimed that on the day of murder, Pradeep called Sri Bhagwan on his mobile from his landline phone installed at Najafgarh. Later, Bhagwan called from his mobile to Shivani's landline to find out if she was at home. And this was then conveyed to Pradeep on his landline by Sri Bhagwan. After getting the confirmation, Pradeep left home for Shivani's apartment. After murdering her, he again rang up Sri Bhagwan from a nearby PCO to inform that the job was done, the police had said. But call records presented a different picture. Running into six pages, the report suffered from absence of IMEI number, time or date of taking the printout from the computer system and gaps in sequence of recording date year and month of the calls.
The court also pointed out that the date format of calls was suddenly changed from January 13, 1999, onwards till date of murder and wondered how changes can occur in a continuous computer printout. The prosecution stated that on January 13, R K Sharma, Sri Bhagwan and co-accused Satya Prakash met in Ashoka Hotel where Sharma introduced Shivani to the others. But the court attached significance to the change in date format.