Court likely to decide Sanjeev Nanda's fate Monday

The Delhi High Court is likely to give its verdict Monday in the infamous BMW hit-and-run case in which a trial court had convicted and sentenced Sanjeev Nanda, grandson of former Naval chief S.M. Nanda, to five years jail for mowing down six persons 1999.

Justice Kailash Gambhir, who had reserved the judgement in May, would announce the verdict on petitions filed by three convicts, including Nanda, challenging the trial court order.

Besides Nanda, the court had also convicted Rajiv Gupta and Bhola Nath and sentenced them to one year and six months, respectively, in jail.

Challenging his conviction in the case, Nanda argued that the trial court had convicted him under "media pressure" and on presumption without evidence.

He submitted that the trial court had erred in believing the controversial eyewitness, Sunil Kulkarni, who, he argued, was not present in the capital on the day of the incident.

Nanda also contended that Kulkarni's testimony, which he termed "unreliable", was considered by the trial court despite Kulkarni coming before the court only after the prosecution had finished submitting its evidence.

Nanda was returning from a party in suburban Gurgaon with his friends Manik Kapoor and Siddharth Gupta in his luxury car in the early hours of Jan 10, 1999, when he mowed down six people in south Delhi's Lodhi Colony area.

Sanjeev, son of arms dealer Suresh Nanda, is a British national. He studied in Modern School, Delhi, and was a management student from Wharton Business School in the US.

Last updated on Jul 19^th, 2009 at 16:02 pm IST--IANS