Madhya Pradesh high court acquits medico in girlfriend murder case, raps police

BHOPAL/JABALPUR: The Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court has acquitted a former medical student in the case of murder of his colleague and asked the state government to compensate him with ₹42 lakh for spending 4,740 days in jail. According to the police charge-sheet, Chandresh Merskole, a final year MBBS student at Gandhi Medical College (GMC), Bhopal and resident of Balaghat, was arrested on August 26, 2008 for allegedly killing his girlfriend and dumping her body in a river near Pachmarhi. Chandresh was arrested on the statement of a senior resident doctor at GMC, a prime witness in the case, who claimed that the accused asked him for a vehicle to go to Hoshangabad to dump the body. The doctor wrote to the then inspector general of police of Bhopal for action against Chandresh, according to the charge-sheet. On the basis of his statement, a Bhopal court sentenced Chandresh to life imprisonment on July 31, 2009. Chandresh filed an appeal in the high court. A division bench of justices Atul Sreedharan and Sunita Yadav acquitted him and said, “The conduct of the police is malicious and the investigation has been done with the intention of securing the conviction of the appellant for an offence he didn’t commit and perhaps for shielding the doctor whose involvement in this offence is strongly suspected though there is no material to hold affirmatively against him as he was not on trial.” The court said that the case was “deliberately botched up” and the appellant falsely implicated to “protect, perhaps, the actual perpetrators” of the offence who may have been known to the higher echelons of the state police. “Under the circumstances, the appeal succeeds and the judgment of conviction imposing on the appellant, the sentence of rigorous imprisonment for life for the offence of murder and three years for an offence of disappearance of evidence is set aside. The appellant shall be at liberty forthwith,” the court said. The court said the appellant, a Gond tribal, who got admission in a state-run medical college thanks to affirmative action (tribal reservation) in the Constitution, was on the verge of becoming a doctor when he was implicated in the case. “On account of this case, his entire life has been thrown into disarray. He has spent 4,740 days in jail. In the facts and circumstances unique to this case, we award the appellant a compensation of ₹42 lakhs which shall be paid within 90 days,” court said and allowed the appellant to proceed against the malicious prosecution. Bhopal police commissioner, Makrand Deoskar, said they are yet to receive the judgement but they will surely follow the instruction of the court.