HC allows owner to sell flat where Grover was found killed

The Bombay High Court has allowed the owner of the flat, in which TV executive Neeraj Grover was found murdered five years ago, to sell the property.
The flat, located in Dheeraj Solitaire in suburban Malad, was rented out to Kannada actor Maria Susairaj when the murder of Grover took place.
While Maria was convicted of destruction of evidence in June 2011, her boyfriend and Navy officer Emile Jerome was held guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment.
The police had sealed the flat after the murder. At the relevant time, the trial court had asked its owner Shivani Attri not to sell it or create any third party rights.

She then moved the High Court which allowed her in December last year to give the house on rent but restrained from selling the property without its permission.
Attri recently urged the court to allow her to sell the flat as the investigation in the case was over and the accused had been convicted. Her plea was granted yesterday.

In a related development, Jerome urged for bail but withdrew his plea after the court said it was not inclined to grant him liberty.
Jerome, convicted for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, pleaded that his appeal against the sentence was pending before the High Court. He said he had spent half of the jail term awarded to him by the trial court and on that ground he sought bail.

Additional Public Prosecutor Mankunwar Deshmukh, however, cited a Supreme Court ruling which said that grant of bail was not automatically considered in cases where the convict had spent half of the sentence pending his appeal.
The prosecutor said that the state had also filed an appeal against the trial court judgement which had acquitted Jerome and Maria from the charge of murder. The state had sought enhancement of Jerome's sentence and hence opposed his bail plea.
Jerome had pleaded in his appeal that the motive, if any, for committing the offence was with Maria and not him.
According to prosecution, Jerome had killed Grover as Maria had allegedly told him that the latter was seeking sexual favours to give her a role in TV programmes.