Shibu Soren gets breather from SC in murder case

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Delhi High Court verdict which had acquitted Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief Shibu Soren in the murder of his private secretary in 1994.

A bench of Justices A K Goel and R F Nariman refused to interfere in 2007 verdict of HC which had set aside trial court judgement holding Soren guilty.

On 28 November 2006, a Delhi trial court had found Soren and four others guilty in a twelve-year-old case involving the kidnapping and murder of his former personal secretary Shashinath Jha.

On 5 December 2006, Shibu Soren was sentenced to life imprisonment. Soren resigned from his post of Union Minister for Coal after then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanded that he do so in the wake of the verdict. This was the first case of a Union Minister of the Government of India being found guilty of involvement in a murder.

However, the Delhi High Court in August 2007 acquitted Soren and four other accused by saying that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has miserably failed in getting evidence against the JMM chief.

The CBI and Jha's family members had challenged the Delhi High Court verdict in the Supreme Court.