It was another blow for Pratyusha Singh’s parents on Monday, as the Supreme Court refused to quash the anticipatory bail granted to actor-producer Rahul Raj Singh. Rahul is accused of abetting the suicide of 24-year-old TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee, who was his girlfriend.
The plea to cancel the bail was filed by Pratyusha’s mother, Soma Banerjee, who had moved the apex court earlier this month, seeking to cancel anticipatory bail granted by the Bombay High Court to Rahul. She had stated in her plea that Rahul should be taken into custody as the investigation is still on in the case and there is likelihood he could tamper with evidence.
It was contended that there were several deep injury marks on the body of the deceased and that the panchnama had several discrepancies. The High Court had on April 25 granted anticipatory bail to Rahul, who has denied the allegations levelled against him.
However, the Supreme Court declined to quash anticipatory bail, saying the last conversation between the two shows they were “intensely in love with each other”.
A vacation bench of justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy refused to entertain the petition saying there was no strong and compelling ground to cancel the anticipatory bail granted to Singh.
“The last conversation between the two shows that they were intensely in love with each other. Without any strong and compelling grounds, anticipatory bail cannot be cancelled. If the probe agency finds during investigation that it is a case of section 302 (murder) of IPC and accused needs to be taken into custody, it can move to High Court,” the bench said. The court said that there was no suicide note also to attribute any role to the accused.
Pratyusha committed suicide on April 1 by hanging herself inside her flat in suburban Goregaon. Rahul was booked for abetment to suicide on April 5, and was granted anticipatory bail 20 days later.
( Source – PTI )
