JMM MP's secretary was abducted, CBI tells Delhi HC

Member of Parliament Shibhu Soren's missing secretary Shashinath Jha was ''abducted'' from a busy roundabout in the capital on the night of May 22, 1994, and investigations are on to identify and locate the abductors, the Central Bureau of Investigation told the Delhi high court on Tuesday.

CBI counsel A K Dutt told a division bench consisting of Justice Arun Kumar and Justice N G Nandi that the agency would require another six to eight weeks to locate the abductors of Shashinath Jha, who was a close aide of Soren, an accused in the Rs 35 million JMM members of Parliament payoffs case.

The high court had transferred the case to the CBI from Delhi police on October 10, 1996, after Shashinath Jha's mother Priyambada Devi moved a habeas corpus petition which contended that the police was not investigating the mysterious disappearance of her son because of ''pressure'' from Soren.

Priyambada Devi claimed that her son was privy to the various ''deeds and misdeeds'' of Soren and was also a business partner of Soren's son and wife.

Presenting the CBI's first status report to the division bench, counsel A K Dutt said the investigators had reached a ''significant stage'' in the probe. Two people who claimed to be ''eyewitnesses'' to the ''abduction'' had been questioned and efforts were on to locate one of the suspects whose picture was drawn up by a computer printout following the witnesses' description.

Also, some people had been put through the polygraph (lie detector) test also and the results of these were awaited, the CBI said.

According to the CBI affidavit submitted to the high court one of the witnesses had told it that Jha would frequently come to his shop near Dhaula Kuan bus stand to buy cigarettes. Some two years ago, Jha had come to his shop around 2330 hours, and asked for a packet of cigarettes. Immediately thereafter, one white Ambassador car reached there and two people got down and also asked for cigarettes. Thereafter, Shashinath Jha started talking to those persons near the car and after 10 minutes there were heated arguments between the two men and Jha.

''Thereafter, Shashinath Jha was pushed into the Ambassador car which sped away immediately towards Gurgaon. The witness also stated that Shashinath was heavily drunk and was not in a position, to resist. Significantly, after the incident, though both the witnesses could not recollect its exact date, Shashinath was never seen in that area,'' the CBI stated.

Counsel K Sunil appearing for Priyambada Devi, however, charged the CBI with deliberately giving a ''new angle'' to the disappearance with a view to ''hushing up the case.''

He contended that the CBI had not even once questioned Soren's wife or his son Hemant, with whom Shashinath Jha had business dealings. Sunil said the agency was focusing on Jha's relationship with a woman as the cause of his disappearance to divert the focus of the probe.

According to the CBI affidavit, queries with Jha's associates regarding business disputes and rivalries did not reveal any significant clue. The accounts of the firm in which Jha was a partner, along with Soren's wife and son and interrogation of witnesses did not reveal any ''possible motive, indication of dispute or any other precipitating factor.''

Soren has been chargesheeted by the CBI, along with 20 others, for allegedly being party to a criminal conspiracy to save the P V Narasimha Rao-led government in July 1993 by giving and receiving bribes running into millions of rupees.