RK Sharma leaves the court premises on Tuesday after his conviction in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case. Pictures by Prem Singh

New Delhi/Chandigarh, March 18: Once high-flying PMO official Ravi Kant Sharma was today convicted in the 1999 murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar, a case that had threatened to suck the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan into a scandal.

After a five-year trial that saw 51 of the 209 witnesses turn hostile, a Delhi court held the IPS officer guilty of murder and conspiracy along with co-accused Satya Prakash, Bhagwan Sharma and Pradeep Sharma.

Pradeep is accused of strangling Shivani with an electric wire in her Delhi flat after she allegedly threatened to “expose” how Ravi Kant, said to be her lover, had passed on classified PMO documents to her.

Additional sessions judge Rajendra Kumar Shastri will pronounce the sentence on March 20. A death sentence is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases, involving extreme cruelty, so the strongest punishment that may be expected is a life term.

Pradeep burst into tears after the verdict but Ravi Kant, 54, was heard telling an acquaintance: “It does not matter.”

Dressed casually in a pink T-shirt and trousers, the officer had a stoical expression throughout, betraying just a hint of emotion when his sister hugged him as he was being led away to the prison van.

He sat next to the driver, as if he was still a top officer, while the other convicts were cooped up inside the heavily fortified van.

His wife, sister and two daughters, who were waiting outside the court building, refused to answer questions from reporters and left the premises in tears.

For a long time after his arrest in September 2002, the officer with connections and a brilliant record had stayed confident of acquittal.

When his daughter got married in April 2003, dozens of cars with red lights could be seen at the venue where Ravi Kant, in red kurta-pyjamas and turban, welcomed the who’s who of Haryana. He was merely out on bail but that seemed to matter neither to the guests nor to the staff who lit up the sky with fireworks.

Today, the lawns at his upscale home in Haryana’s Panchkula, where his wife Madhu had accused then Union minister Mahajan of a role in Shivani’s murder, lay unkempt with the family away in Delhi.

According to the prosecution, Ravi Kant had become “intimate” with Shivani when he was officer on special duty with the Prime Minister’s Office in 1997, and had leaked crucial documents to her.

Later, they had a fight and she threatened to reveal his role in “passing out classified documents”.

Ravi Kant then got in touch with Pradeep, a Haryana government clerk and son of a policeman who once worked under him, the prosecution said.

Pradeep and four others — Bhagwan, Satya Prakash, Ved Prakash Sharma and Ved alias Kallu — went to Shivani’s east Delhi flat on January 23, 1999. Pradeep went up to meet her with a packet of sweets while the others waited outside.

Pradeep strangled the journalist, the prosecution claimed. The killers left with Shivani’s camera and a gold chain.

Ved Prakash and Kallu were today acquitted of all charges, including murder, conspiracy and receiving stolen property (the camera and the gold chain).

Ravi Kant will challenge the conviction in Delhi High Court, his lawyer S.P. Minocha said.

The 1976-batch IPS officer, son of acclaimed bureaucrat and philanthropist J.D. Sharma, used to be a man envied by his colleagues.

After a successful stint with the Haryana government, he had joined the CBI on deputation in the late ’80s. He carried out several high-profile investigations and was selected by Interpol for an assignment. He was posted in Lyons, France. On return, he joined the PMO and later worked as chief vigilance officer with Air India in Mumbai.

Shivani Bhatnagar

After his name was drawn into the Shivani case, the suave and ambitious officer turned into a recluse, his colleagues said. When a raid on his Panchkula home failed to net him, Delhi police published his pictures in newspapers and announced a reward of Rs 50,000 for any information on him in August 2002. Ravi Kant surrendered the following month.

“Sharma was a bright officer with a wonderful track record. He believed in getting results and his future looked bright,” a senior Haryana police officer said.

“But after his alleged involvement in the Shivani case, he began losing interest in his work. But he never ignored his family, especially his daughters Komal and Pragati.”