HDFC Executive’s Murder Case: Mumbai Sessions Court Orders Test To Determine Age Of Accused At Time Of Killing

Mumbai: A sessions court has ordered ossification test of Sarfaraz Shaikh, accused of killing senior banking executive Siddharth Sanghvi in September 2018.

Shaikh has claimed that he was a juvenile at the time of the murder. An ossification test is a medical procedure that uses X-rays to analyse bone development and determine a person’s age. The test is particularly helpful in forensic science and legal contexts when a person’s age needs to be accurately determined, especially when a person is at or near the age of majority.

The sessions judge Dr AA Joglekar on Friday directed Dean of Sir JJ Hospital to constitute a committee to conduct the ossification test of the accused within two weeks from the date of receipt of order. The court, however, has asked to keep the trial at abeyance till them.

As per the prosecution case, Sanghvi went missing on September 5, 2018. He was reportedly killed in the parking area of his office at the Kamala Mills compound by Shaikh, who later dumped his body in a jungle in Kalyan and abandoned Sanghvi’s car in Navi Mumbai.

Shaikh had earlier this year filed a plea requesting that he be prosecuted as a juvenile, asserting that he was born on July 20, 2001. As of September 5, 2018, the date of the alleged murder, he was 17 years, one month and 16 days old. To support his claim, Shaikh submitted a school record stating that he was admitted in July 2010 and left in July 2012.

The plea was contested by the school leaving certificate he submitted, which was issued by the same school in Bilaspur in January 1993. The prosecution further noted that Shaikh had used this certificate to obtain several other documents, including a driving licence and an Aadhaar card, which indicate his age as 25.

The court had thereafter ordered verification of the documents from authorities and summoned the principal of the school to appear with the relevant records. The officer of the school had told the court that there was no record of Shaikh as he had moved to another school but transfer certificate was also not available.

As there was no verifiable records available to reflect Shaikh’s birth date, the court has now ordered for the medical test to determine his age.

news