After intensive investigations into the Patnagarh wedding gift explosion case for 11 months, the Crime Branch (CB) police submitted the final chargesheet before the Balangir Additional District and Sessions Court on Thursday.
The CB submitted a 76-page report against sole accused Punjilal Meher after examining 76 witnesses in the case of blast in which techie Soumyasekhar Sahu and his grandmother were killed and his bride Reema was seriously injured on February 23, 2018. Earlier, the preliminary charge-sheet had been filed in August 2018.
In the final charge-sheet, the CB has mentioned about several material evidences and statements of the forensic team which is likely to play a vital role in seeking conviction in the case, sources said.
“Two staffs of a Raipur-based courier company had identified Punjilal during the TI parade and their statements were recorded. During the psychological test conducted on Punjilal, the team of the investigating agency found his complicity in the case,” said CB SP Anil Das.
He said motorcycle receipts recovered from Punjilal substantiate that he had gone to Raipur.
Besides, the agency examined the laboratory report regarding the test conducted on the video recorded during crime reconstruction in which Punjilal demonstrated how he assembled the parcel bomb. This clearly shows that the accused knew how to assemble bombs, Das added.
Earlier, the CB filed a 300-page preliminary charge-sheet against Punjilal at the SDJM Court in Patnagarh. As per CB sleuths, Punjilal had hatched the conspiracy to settle personal scores with Sanjukta, mother of Soumyashekhar after she took over as the new Principal of Jyoti Vikash College in Bhainsa. Prior to Sanjukta’s appointment, Punjilal was Principal of the college.
Soumyasekhar and his grandmother were killed in the explosion while opening the parcel which they had received as wedding gift.
The CB took charge of the probe in the case from the Patnagarh police of Balangir district on March 23, 2018.
“The CB has submitted the final charge-sheet. Earlier, the investigating agency submitted an interim charge-sheet hastily within 120 days of the case so that bail could be denied to Punjilal. I believe they (CB) don’t have any evidence and everything is fabricated as it took the CB 11 long months to file the final charge-sheet,” said Punjilal’s counsel Srimad Panigrahi.
However, the CB has not been able to track down the three main eyewitnesses, an auto-rickshaw driver and two rickshaw-pullers who had taken Punjilal to the courier agency in Raipur, from where he had dispatched the parcel bomb.