Samarth Singh, the husband of "dowry death" victim Twisha Sharma, was taken into custody by the Jabalpur police on Friday, shortly after his alleged attempt to surrender at the Jabalpur District Court.
The lawyer by profession, who was barred from practice by the Bar Council of India (BCI) on Friday, was taken to the Omti Police Station near the Jabalpur court and will be handed over to the Bhopal police, as per one of his lawyers, Jaydeep Kaurav.
The Jabalpur court had directed him to surrender before an appropriate court with jurisdiction in the matter, a PTI report said.
This mirrors earlier claims made by advocate Anurag Srivastav—who represents the victim. He 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 counsel for Twisha Sharma's husband, Samarth Singh, had earlier indicated that he planned to surrender after 10 days in hiding since her death.
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(twisha sharma anurag srivastav, samarth singh jabalpur bhopal court surrender)https://t.co/2k7kDoKtjs
Alleging that Samarth's mother, retired judge Giribala Singh, was still trying to influence the case indirectly, Srivastav added that at Jabalpur, the accused had been seated in a dark courtroom alongside three clerks who had "no answer" for why 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.
Samarth, who is a lawyer by profession, 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 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.
It also comes amid pressure from Twisha's family to expedite the investigation as "the clock was ticking" for her body to decompose, since the AIIMS Bhopal mortuary—where her body was kept—was storing it at -4ºC, while doctors had advised that it be kept at -80ºC for long-term preservation—a feature currently not available at AIIMS Bhopal.
Her family has also alleged a number of discrepancies in the first postmortem of her body, which eventually led to the Madhya Pradesh High Court clearing the way for AIIMS Delhi to conduct a second autopsy.
With the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) now set to take over the case, it is not clear whether her body will either be moved to AIIMS Delhi, or a team from there will reach AIIMS Bhopal as stated earlier by Ankur Pandey (another of the lawyers representing the victim).
