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CRIME: JESSICA LALL CASE
 See
No Evil
Despite four key witnesses turning hostile, one
woman's deposition in the high-profile murder case gives the prosecution
some hope
By Sayantan Chakravarty
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"Shayan said
Jessica had been shot by the man in the white T-shirt ... the man
who was rude is in front of me."
Malini Ramani
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A finger was raised
last week inside a sultry Delhi courtroom pregnant with expectations.
It gingerly pointed across the room at a man, about five-and-a-half feet
tall, who uneasily looked away. An ancient Remington typewriter clattered
to life. As the judge dictated the words and several people inside the
courtroom rejoiced in hushed tones, the following critical sentence, spoken
under oath, was belted out by the Remington: "Yes, it does look like
him."
The sentence may turn the much talked-about
Jessica Lall murder case on its head.
The pointing finger, and the words, belonged
to fashion designer Malini Ramani, 31. The man at whom it pointed was
Manu Sharma, accused of firing twice and shooting dead Ramani's model
friend at south Delhi's Qutab Colonnade in the early hours of April 30,
1999. The identification of Sharma was crucial since four prosecution
witnesses to the murder had turned hostile in court in May. Delhi's Joint
Commissioner of Police Amod Kanth, who is in charge of the high-profile
murder case, feels the witnesses had been "bought off and heavily
influenced by wielders of money, muscle, and power".
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SLIPPERY: The prosecution was despairing of being able to
nail main accused Sharma
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Ramani is the daughter of socialite Bina Ramani
whose Thursday evening parties made the Colonnade's Tamarind Court Cafe,
and its then unlicensed bar Once Upon A Time, one of the capital's most
happening places. "The pressures to retract my statement, and the
threats, over the last two years have been enormous," Malini said
just before her crucial deposition last week. An hour later she did what
many did not expect her to: stick to the statements she made before the
police soon after the murder. Not only did she identify Sharma as the
man who had asked for a drink around 2 a.m. on April 30 (1999), she also
said he was the one who had "a rude exchange" of words with
her and Jessica barely a minute before the model was shot. Malini hadn't
been inside the bar, but she knew it was the same man who had shot Jessica
who stood before her in court last week. Primarily because several witnesses,
including her mother (who had tried to stop a fleeing Sharma), had narrated
detailed accounts of the incident. Malini also crucially recalled that
seconds after the gunshot Jessica's friend and fellow bartender, Shayan
Munshi, had run out screaming, "The fellow in the white T-shirt (Sharma)
and jeans has shot Jessica."
The deposition of Malini in the murder case
has breathed fresh life into the prosecution that has not only been beleaguered
by witnesses going back on their words, but several other unexpected twists
and turns. On July 4, a day before Malini deposed, Parikshit Sagar, 29,
a businessman friend of Sharma, and one among 90 people partying when
Jessica was shot, turned hostile (see box).
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