New Delhi – The presenter of late-90’s popular fugitive hunter TV show India’s Most Wanted has been acquitted by Delhi High Court on Friday in his wife’s murder case.
The 52-years-old TV producer and presenter – Suhaib Ilyasi – was arrested on March 28th 2000 for stabbing his wife Anju to death on 11th January 2000 at their residence in East Delhi.
A bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel set aside the trial court order convicting Ilyasi, holding there was no evidence against him and that the prosecution too failed to establish the murder charges.
The bench accepted the arguments of Ilyasi’s advocates Rajiv Mohan and Abhimanyu Kampani that the trial court had reached the conclusion of guilt of the accused based on conjectures and the conviction was not supported by material on record.
Ilyasi claimed that the police had not collected any material for three months after the incident and there was no evidence to charge him for the offence of murder. The police had claimed he had misled the investigating agency.
He was taken into custody on December 16th 2017 after his conviction, contended in his plea that after framing of additional charge under Section 302 of the IPC for the offence of murder, he was not given an opportunity to cross-examine all the witnesses.
The trial court sentenced Ilyasi to life term on December 20th 2017 for stabbing his wife to death, saying he “committed murder and gave it a color of suicide”.
It also imposed a fine of rupees Two hundred thousand on him and directed that rupees ten hundred thousand be paid as compensation to Anju’s parents.
He was arrested after his sister-in-law and mother-in-law alleged that he used to torture his wife for dowry.
