Court commits Chhatrasal Stadium murder case against Sushil Kumar to sessions court

New Delhi, September 13

A Delhi court on Monday committed the Chhatrasal Stadium murder case, involving Olympic medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar, to the Sessions court for further hearing after taking cognisance of the charge sheet filed against him and others for the offences of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Satvir Singh Lamba of Rohini court has committed the case to the Sessions court, but whom it will be listed before is yet to be decided, the counsel for Sushil Kumar said, adding that the next date of hearing is September 24.

Kumar, along with several other accused, was produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate through video-conference in the morning.

They were asked to mark their attendance. Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar jail.

The Olympic wrestler and others had allegedly assaulted former junior national wrestling champion Sagar Dhankar and his friends at the stadium on the intervening night of May 4 and 5 over an alleged property dispute.

Dhankar succumbed to the injuries later. According to the post-mortem report, he died due to the “cerebral damage resulting from blunt object impact”.

On August 3, the Delhi Police filed a charge sheet in the murder case, in which it named the Olympic wrestler as the main accused. The judge took the cognizance of offences in the final report on August 6.

The police said the brawl at the stadium was the result of a conspiracy hatched by Kumar, who wanted to re-establish his supremacy among younger wrestlers.

In the charge sheet, the police relied on the oral dying declaration of the deceased, scientific evidence including locations of the accused, CCTV footage, weapons, and vehicles recovered from the spot.

Delhi Police had filed an FIR against the accused for offences such as murder, attempt to murder, culpable homicide, criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, robbery, rioting, among others.

The Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) divides criminal trial into sessions trial and magistrate trial. The sessions court tries serious offences. If the offences are triable exclusively by the session court, the magistrate commits the case to it after taking cognisance of the charge sheet. PTI