The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the appeal to cancel the bail to actor Darshan Thogudipa in the Renukaswamy murder case by the Karnataka government, even reiterated its displeasure over the High Court’s perspective, which gave him relief.
Darshan was arrested on June 11, 2024 for a fan, Renukaswamy for his alleged role in his 9 June murder, who allegedly abused and abused his close friend and actor Pavitra Gowda on social media. After investigation, members of his gang and Gowda were arrested that the actor had allegedly paid some people for murder in Bengaluru.
On 13 December 2024, the Karnataka High Court granted him regular bail, Gowda, co-accused Pradosh Rao, Jagdish alias Jaggu, Anu Kumar, Laxman M, and Nagaraju.
‘Matter of concern’
A bench of Justices JB Pardwala and R Mahadevan surprised whether the High Court would have a similar approach in all bail arguments in front of it. Justice Pardwala asked senior advocate Siddharth Dave, who appeared for darshan, “In a light vein, you do not think the High Court has ordered the acquittal of all 7 (out of 17 accused in the charge sheet)?”
“There are ways and ways to assign reasons. The way the High Court has determined the order is very sorry to say, but does the High Court determine the same type of orders in all bail applications? It is disturbing us that the High Court’s approach is! … This is the understanding of the judge? The judge said? The judge said.
Although Dave tried to defend the order of HC, saying that the conclusions are only initial, Justice Pardiwala said, “This is a question of priority exercise of discretion of conscience. We have implemented our mind in judicial way, using discretion. We will not convince him.
Evidence in case of eyewitnesses, Renukaswamy murder
Appearing for the state, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra narrated the nature of the sequence of incidents and the nature of evidence against the accused actor. Luthra said that when Darshan was in jail, two more cases were registered against him, and after coming on bail, he was seen in a company of prosecution witnesses.
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The court mentioned two eyewitnesses in the case and asked if their statement had been confirmed.
Luthra said that the prosecution has recovered pictures of the actor along with other accused from an eyewitness phone.
The court asked when the picture was taken, to which Luthra said it was taken immediately after the attack. “So after the attack, the person click a picture with the actor?” Justice Pardwala asked, this is “incredible”.
Luthra blamed it for the actors for a kind of creed worship.
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When the court also demanded to know that the Karnataka High Court said that eyewitnesses were not reliable, Luthra said HC concluded that his statements were contradictory. Dave said that an eyewitness’s statement was recorded after 12 days, and wonder what the police had been doing for so many days.
For a quarry from the bench about bloodshed on recorded articles, Dave said that recovery was done three days after the Renukaswamy murder.
Luthra also informed the apex court that the examination of 65 main witnesses would be completed within six months.
In September, the Bengaluru Police filed a 3,991-page charge sheet, in which Pavitra Gowda named the accused number one and Darshan as accused number two. In addition to Darshan and Gowda, other winds named in the charge sheet are 29; Raghavendra, 43; Nandish, 28; Jagdish, 36; Akhikumar, 25; Ravi Shankar, 32; Dhanraj D, 27; Vinay V, 38; Nagraju, 41; Laxman, 54; Deepak, 39; Off, 40; Karthik, 27; Keshavamurthy, 27; And Nikhil Nyak, 21.
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The police based their allegations against philosophy on call detail records and DNA reports, allegedly registered their presence at the crime site.
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