By PTI
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Tuesday dismissed an application filed by Anirudh Dahiya, one of the accused in the Chhatrasal Stadium murder case involving Olympic medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar, seeking 13-day interim bail to appear for a college exam.
Additional Sessions Judge Shivaji Anand denied relief to the 23-year-old international wrestler after noting that he and the victims in the case are from the same fraternity and there is an apprehension of threat to Dahiya’s life due to enmity.
The judge also accepted the arguments of the prosecutor that Dahiya should have applied for appearing in the online examination on time.
The last day to apply for the online examination was September 24.
“Keeping in view the fact that in the present case a large group of accused persons is involved and even the charge sheet against all the accused persons has not been filed. In view of nature and gravity of the offence, I do not find it a fit case for grant of interim bail,” the judge said.
“Further the applicant/accused and victims are from the same fraternity and there is an apprehension of life of the present applicant also due to enmity,” the court added.
Dahiya had told the court that he has to physically appear for the fourth-semester exams for which he needs bail from September 27 to October 9.
He claimed that he could not give his first and third-semester exams from jail earlier due to technical intricacies and administrative lapses.
During the course of the hearing, Dahiya’s counsel Himanshu Rana submitted that his client could only give exams in the offline mode as the date for applying for the option for giving exams through online mode has passed.
“Please keep my future in mind,” Rana told the court.
To this, advocate Nitin Vasishth, appearing for the victim and complainant Sonu, said, “If he was such a good student, he should not have committed the crime.”
This was the second time this month that the accused sought interim bail for the exam.
Earlier this month, the court had dismissed his plea seeking interim bail for appearing in first and third semester exams but allowed him to take an online exam from the jail.
In the fresh bail plea, Dahiya had claimed that he has to appear in five examinations which are scheduled to take place from September 29 to October 6 and if he is not given time to prepare for them, his ‘whole future will be ruined’.
The case in which he is accused relates to the alleged murder of former junior national wrestling champion Sagar Dhankar.
Sushil Kumar is the main accused in the case.
Kumar and Dahiya along with several others had allegedly assaulted Dhankar and his friends at the stadium on the intervening night of May 4 and 5 over an alleged property dispute.
Dhankar succumbed to the injuries later.
According to the post-mortem report, he died due to ‘cerebral damage resulting from blunt object impact’.