Patna, May 2: Rupam Pathak, the main accused in the murder of Purnea MLA Rajkishore Keshari, on Monday filed a regular bail petition in Patna High Court.

Rupam, who filed the petition for a regular bail through his counsel Dinesh Kumar, cited Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet under Section 304 Part I (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) instead of Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Dinesh Kumar, the petitioner’s counsel, submitted that since the CBI, which has filed a chargesheet under Section 304 Part I, is virtually making admission that it was “not a case of murder” as was earlier alleged by the informant to be a cold-blooded murder.

Similarly, the premier investigating agency, which has been assigned the case after a lot of furore by some political parties and social organisations, has also not filed its chargesheet under Section 120(b) of IPC, which relates to criminal conspiracy, Kumar said, adding that it shows that the agency has been unable to establish criminal conspiracy.

While citing the agency’s concluding report, the counsel submitted that Rupam was forced to take the extreme step thinking that justice would not be done to her sexual exploitation.

Kumar pointed out the inconsistency in the FIR and the seizure list — the FIR says that Pathak used a dagger, whereas the seizure list talks of a knife.

Referring to the provisions of CrPC, the counsel contended that the court should take a lenient view on a woman’s bail application, particularly when the accused was not a professional killer.

The accused has been awarded with Mahadevi Verma Sahitya Samman 2005 and she has already submitted her thesis for PhD degree, Kumar added.

Rupam Pathak (53), a principal of a private school which she founded, knifed Keshari to death at his ancestral home in Purnea on January 4 this year.

Jail blinding case

A bench of Justice Dharnidhar Jha of high court upheld the lower court’s sentence to the two former policemen — Mohammed Wasiuddin, then officer in-charge where the incident of blinding occurred, and Brinda Prasad, an assistant sub-inspector in an infamous Bhagalpur blinding case in the early-1980s.

The court, however, acquitted another then ASI Mankeshwar Prasad Singh for want of evidence in the same case.

The trial court had sentenced the three police personnel to three years of jail term.