Mumbai: A man arrested three years ago in the Antilia bomb scare and Mansukh Hiran murder case has written to the trial court saying he wants to retract his confession statement.
Manish Soni, 48, was accused of driving the car in which Hiran was allegedly murdered. He was arrested on June 17, 2021. In his alleged confession statement to the National Investigation Agency, Soni described the sequence of events leading up to the murder and the roles of co-accused Santosh Shelar, Satish Mothkuri and Anand Jadhav.
He has now written a letter to the court from Yerawada Central Jail to “take back his confession statement or to cancel” it. The letter, written on September 25, reached the court on Wednesday. The court has now asked the prosecution to respond to his plea by October 25.
Meanwhile, Jadhav has sought bail. “The whole case of the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence; there is no material to connect the accused with the present case. There is only one witness who speaks regarding the alleged car and about one Anand. Whether the accused is the same Anand or not is not corroborated because no Test Identification Parade has been conducted in the present case by which the identity of the accused would have stood corroborated,” the plea said.
Jadhav has also raised an issue on the disclosure statements made by the accused to the police. “All the disclosure statements are inadmissible on two counts. Firstly, there is no discovery of the places because the NIA were already aware of the places even before recording disclosure statement. Secondly, all the accused persons who made disclosure statement have stated about the same thing, so who disclosed first in time is not known.”
Jadhav has also raised questions on application of provisions of UAPA to the case.
