A day after 12 men were sentenced for the murder of former Gujarat minister Haren Pandya, his widow on Tuesday  demanded a re-investigation into the crime, alleging “loopholes” in the probe conducted by the CBI.
“As per forensic reports, no blood stain was found in the car in which Pandya was killed, which is very unlikely,” Jagruti Pandya told reporters here.
Mr Pandya, a former Minister of State for Home, was killed while sitting in his car near Law Garden where he had gone for a morning walk on March 26, 2003.
The POTA Court on Monday sentenced nine persons to life imprisonment and three others to rigorous imprisonment ranging from five to seven years in the case.
Mrs Pandya said she had full faith in the judiciary, but not in the investigations into the case.
Forensic experts who testified in the POTA Court said that injuries received by the slain leader were not possible from a car window.
“Circular gun-shot wounds, as noted in the post-mortem report (authored by doctors of V S Hospital, Ahmedabad) is an impossibility, when a person is sitting inside a Maruti car on the driver’s seat and the assailant is standing out of the driver’s side door with a very narrow opening of the driver side window,” she quoted deposition of forensic experts as saying in the POTA Court.
“I don’t think the murder was committed by Muslims as Haren Pandya was not communal,” she added.
Meeting with Modi
Mrs Pandya, who will soon meet Chief Minister Narendra Modi to seek re-investigation of the case, said, “There are many question marks on the investigation side”.
She stated that preliminary investigations were conducted by D G Vanzara, presently in judicial custody in the fake encounter case of Soharabuddin Sheikh.
“The CBI took charge from Mr Vanzara and relied on his reports. Even CBI had openly admitted to the media that when it took over the case, vital clues had been lost,” she claimed.
“The CBI had not produced mobile and landline phone records of my husband in the court for two and half years after murder.
The investigating officer admitted during his cross examination in the court that the CBI had procured these call records on March 30, 2003.
The officer also admitted that CBI has no idea as to where the original printouts of phone records are,” Pandya said, raising questions as to where the original phone records disappeared.
She said that despite several pleas, she was never called for making a statement by the probe agency. “I was the last person perhaps who spoke to my husband at our residence before he was killed.
I could have provided some vital information,” she added.
When queried whether her representation to Modi would yield results in the wake of allegations levelled by her father-in-law Vitthal Pandya against the chief minister over the murder,Jagruti Pandya said, “Haren Pandya was a BJP worker and party leaders might pitch for re-investigation to bring out the truth”.