The Supreme Court will hear tomorrow a petition filed by Payal Maheshwari, wife of gangster Sanjiv Maheshwari ‘Jeeva’, seeking permission to attend his funeral.
The matter was listed today before the Vacation Bench of Justice Aniruddha Bose and Justice Rajesh Bindal, which agreed to hear it on Friday.
The Counsel appearing for Payal contended that he was arguing solely on humanitarian grounds and not on the merits of the matter. He argued that Payal, who was herself booked as a gangster, must be provided one-day protection to attend the funeral.
The petition was vehemently opposed by Additional Advocate General (AAG) of Uttar Pradesh, Ardhendumauli K Prasad. He submitted that Payal was one of the gangsters named in the chart. As far as the funeral was concerned, he said he was not even getting into that.
The Counsel for the petitioner requested the court to ensure that no coercive action was taken against Payal in the meantime. He said Payal had to give this consolation to her family, which included three sons and a daughter.
The Apex Court was later apprised that the body of Sanjeev Jeeva would be taken from Lucknow to Muzaffarnagar, his hometown.
Sanjeev Maheshwari, who was an accused in the 1997 murder case of BJP leader Brahm Dutt Dwivedi and the murder case of Krishna Nand Rai, was shot dead by an unknown assailant on Wednesday. Police said the shooter, who came into the court dressed up like a lawyer, has been detained.
The jailed gangster was brought to the court for hearing in a criminal case when the accused opened fire at him.
The 48-year-old gangster was notorious for being one of the dreaded shooters of Ansari. Several criminal cases have been registered against him for offences such as murder, kidnapping, extortion and dacoity in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Hardiwar and Farrukhabad regions of Uttar Pradesh.
Police said Maheshwari was accused in 24 cases, out of which he had been acquitted in 17. He was acquitted in the murder case of BJP MLA Krishna Nand Rai in 2005.
The CBI court in Lucknow had sentenced Maheshwari and former Samajwadi Party MLA Vijay Singh to life imprisonment in the murder case of Brahm Dutt on July 17, 2003. The convicts had moved the Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court against the verdict, which upheld the trial court judgment in 2017.