Kundra not illegally detained, rules HC

The Bombay High Court (HC) recently disposed of a writ petition filed by Anushree Kundra, accused in the murder of Delhi-based lawyer Juhi Prasad, and ruled that she was not illegally detained by police as she had claimed.

Kundra had filed the writ petition on January 30 stating that her detention from December 8 to December 12, 2011 was illegal as police had failed to seek extension of her magisterial custody.

The HC had directed the Pune district and sessions judge Anant Badar to conduct an inquiry.

After the inquiry, Badar had reported that the detention was not illegal. After hearing the facts of the case and referring various case laws presented by Kundra's lawyers Ashok Mundargi and Vaibhav Jathar as well as the prosecution lawyer A S Shitole, HC justice K U Chandiwal observed, 'the detention for three days (December 8 to 12, 2011), though was unauthorised, (it) will not make out a case of extending indefeasible right of bail to the petitioner.'

The dismissal of this writ petition assumes importance as ever since Kundra's arrest in November 2011, her anticipatory and regular bail pleas had been rejected by the magistrate court in Pune and the Pune Sessions court. Kundra had applied for bail in the HC on grounds of alleged illegal detention. After the writ petition was dismissed, her bail plea too stands rejected.

Kundra has been accused of murdering Juhi Prasad on October 13 at her fiance Nimesh Sinha's rented flat in Wanowrie. The accused, allegedly angry after hearing about Sinha's engagement to Prasad, had gone to his Pune residence where she entered into an argument with Prasad and Sinha. Police said she set the couple on fire when they were asleep.

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