Former officer's evidence recorded in Pujari case

Pune: The prosecution on Saturday completed the process of recording the examination of retired senior inspector Deepak Sawant of the Yerawada police station before the special judge in the gang rape and murder of techie Nayana Pujari.
Pujari was found raped and murdered in the Zarewadi forest, Khed taluka, on October 8, 2009. In the ensuing investigation, the Yerawada police had arrested four suspects and filed a chargesheet against them in January 2010 for kidnapping, rape, murder, robbery as well as destroying evidence.
The main accused, Yogesh Raut (24) and his two aides Rajesh Chaudhary (23) and Mahesh Thakur (24) are from Khed. The fourth accused, Vishwas Kadam (26) is from Satara. Chaudhary has since turned approver in the case.
Earlier, during the examination in chief conducted by the special public prosecutor Harshad Nimbalkar, Sawant gave the sequence of events as to how he had recovered Pujari's bangle from Kadam's friend. The bangle was identified by the victim's husband Abhijit and his family friend.
Sawant told the court that Chaudhary had given a statement in the presence of a panch witness that he had allegedly raped Pujari and that Kadam had asked her to reveal the PIN of her debit card, but she could not write it on a visiting card because she was in a state of severe shock.
He said it was Thakur who then wrote the PIN on the card. He then withdrew the money from various ATMs. The card was later recovered from Chaudhary's residence.
According to Sawant, he obtained specimen signatures of all accused to identify the handwriting on the card, besides he had collected specimens of their natural handwriting and sent it to an expert to seek his opinion as well as collected electronic evidence to show that Kadam and Raut were present at the concerned spots.
He gave details as to how he had recovered the clothes Kadam had worn on the day of the incident and the knife used in the crime. He informed the court about seizing the victim's blood donation card from a private hospital. The card was used to match her blood group with the stains found on Kadam's trouser.
He further told the court that he had collected evidence to show that Raut was not on duty on October 7 and 8, 2009, when the incident took place. The DNA test report confirmed that all accused had allegedly raped Pujari. Three eye witnesses had identified the accused.
Defence counsel Biju Aloor will now commence the cross examination of this witness at the next hearing which will happen on May 5.