Saturday, July 29 2006 12:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court yesterday (July 28, 2006) admitted the appeal filed by the CBI seeking an early hearing of the application filed against the acquittal of Santosh Singh, son of a top IPS officer charged with committing the rape and murder of his law collegemate, Priyadarshin Mattoo.

A Division Bench of Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin while admitting the plea for early hearing posted the matter for further hearing to August 31.

In its appeal filed in 200l, the CBI had charged that the trial judge G P Thareja had erroneously discarded on flimsy grounds the prosecution's strong scientific and medical evidence to acquit Singh.

According to the CBI the trial judge had failed to appreciate among other things the forensic and DNA evidence submitted by the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, which established the involvement of the accused in the crime.

Further the CBI stated that trial court did not take into consideration, the circumstantial evidence in which the prosecution was able to clearly prove the presence of the accused both before and after the heinous offence was committed at the victim's house in Vasant Kunj on th fateful day of June 23, 1996.

The CBI's application for early hearing comes in the wake of mounting public and media pressure for a re-trial andearly hearing of the appeal against the acquittal of the accused, who is incidentally now practising law at the is Hazari and Patiala courts.

Though the CBI had originally filed an appeal against the acquittal in 2000, the matter surprisingly never came for hearing all these years.

However, after the appeal filed by the Delhi police following public outrage against the acquittal of Manu Sharma and six other accused in the Jessica Lal murder, pressure has been mounting on the CBI also to pursue afresh the appeal filed against the acquittal of Singh in the Matoo case, since in both the cases the accused happened to be the sons of highly influential members of the society.