In a fresh twist to the Shehla Masood murder case, the CBI is set to make Mr D.N. Singh, a BJP legislator from Bhopal who was once a suspect, the prime witness in the case.
According to sources, the decision to make Mr Singh a prime witness was taken after recent questioning of the BJP legislator in Bhopal. “Mr Singh was recently questioned following fresh revelations made by Zahida Parvez (a Bhopal-based interior designer) and her friend Shaba Farooqi in connection with the RTI activist murder case. Both Zahida and Shaba are prime accused in the murder case and are in judicial custody,” sources said.
The two had alleged that Mr Singh’s role must be probed by the agency. The CBI, which had also conducted a lie-detector test on Mr Singh, has not found any substantive clues against the MLA. The agency, which had constituted a separate team to scrutinise the findings of the lie-detector test, found no evidence to link the BJP legislator to the crime and the conspiracy behind it, sources said, adding he will now be made a witness. A CBI probe revealed that Zahida had allegedly very close relations with the MLA, to the extent of obsession, and resented his closeness to Masood. “Scrutiny of the personal diary of Zahida has revealed the motive and chain of events. It is suspected that the murder was purportedly triggered by Zahida’s obsession with the MLA who was also close to Masood. Zahida, in her own handwriting, had noted in the diary, ‘I was depressed’,” sources said.