In a fresh twist in the Twisha Sharma "dowry death" case, an advocate representing the victim has claimed that Samarth Singh had not surrendered, despite earlier plans to do so.
The advocate, Anurag Srivastav, explained that despite Singh's arrival at the Jabalpur District Court, there had been "no surrender" so far.
"Inside the courtroom of the District Court, Jabalpur, Samarth Singh was sitting comfortably in the dark, with all the lights off, wearing a mask. The judge was not on the dais," he told reporters, crying foul at the possible influence of his mother, retired judge Giribala Singh.
Srivastav also questioned why Samarth was brought to the Jabalpur court, as he allegedly had "no authority" to surrender there in the first place, and was to surrender before the trial court in Bhopal.
The victim's counsel also recalled that there had been three clerks in the dark courtroom with Samarth—all of whom allegedly had "no answer" why, and in what capacity, he had been kept there.
"As soon as Samarth Singh saw me, he ran away. His lawyers pushed me away ... I have no idea whether the police came here or not," he added.
Notably, Samarth had earlier faced a choice between two modes of surrender—either before a trial court, or before the investigating officer. Earlier today, his counsel had claimed that he was considering the former option.
This also comes just hours after they withdrew his application for anticipatory bail in the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday. This bail plea had reached the High Court on Thursday after earlier being rejected from a lower court.
However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta—representing the Madhya Pradesh government—had strongly opposed the manner in which Singh had planned to surrender.
“(Samarth Singh) wants to surrender, I have no difficulty. But he has no locus standi to address the court on the second postmortem issue, which is solely between the victim’s family, the court and the state,” Mehta added, as per a Live Law report.