A cab driver, facing trial for allegedly raping a 25-year-old woman in his car, today alleged in a city court that the police conducted a "shoddy and botched up" probe in the case to falsely implicate him.
Driver Shiv Kumar Yadav's counsel, while continuing the final arguments in the case, said there were several missing links in the investigation of the police and several documents were "planted" by the probe agency.
"There were several improvements in the woman's statements and she was also supporting the shoddy and botched up probe of the police. Police was planting evidence and she was supporting it," Yadav's counsel D K Mishra told Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja.
He argued that for three days after incident till December 8, 2014, the woman in her statements to the police and also before a magistrate had mentioned the name of the accused as "Gaurav" which she had come to know through mobile application 'Truecaller'.
How could the police know that the name of the accused was "Shiv Kumar Yadav" and they proceeded to arrest him. "This showed planting and manufacturing of evidence by police," the counsel claimed.
He further alleged the "woman deliberately identified a wrong person as the accused in the case and it was not his client Yadav who was involved in the alleged incident".
One of the important witnesses, the woman's friend who had booked the cab for her, was not examined by the police for 10 days after the incident, he claimed, adding that the man was called to the police station only on December 15.
His arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow.
The prosecutor, while advancing final arguments, had earlier said an accused can be convicted on the basis of sole testimony of the victim if it is trustworthy.
According to the prosecution, the incident took place on the night of December 5 last year when the 25-year-old victim, a finance executive working in Gurgaon, was heading back home.
Police had said the woman had taken the taxi from Vasant Vihar to return to her house in Inderlok area in north Delhi but the accused took another route to an isolated place and allegedly raped her. Yadav was arrested on December 7, 2014 from Mathura and is currently under judicial custody.
The court has framed charges against Yadav under IPC for alleged offences of endangering a woman's life while raping her, abducting with an intent to compel her for marriage and criminally intimidating and causing hurt.
The court had also recorded the testimony of the accused in which he termed the charge against him as "false".
