Meerut: After nearly 47 years, a Bulandshahr court has acquitted Naresh Chandra Sharma, a watchman at govt wheat procurement centre in Pahasu, in a 1979 case involving the alleged disappearance of 140 sacks of wheat, holding that “prosecution failed to establish his guilt beyond reasonable doubt”.
Narrating his five-decade-old ordeal, Sharma told TOI: “I’m now 67. I appealed to the judge that if she felt I was guilty then ‘announce a sentence and I’ll serve it; and if not, then grant me freedom from the burden of these 47 years’… The last one was during the Covid pandemic in 2021. He spent around Rs 6 lakh in litigation and travel over the decades, according to him.
Sharma was put behind bars thrice when he failed to turn up for the hearing.
“Until 2003, I had to travel to Meerut court every week. A truck loaded with wheat worth around Rs 19,000 left the procurement centre on the night of July 13, 1979, allegedly for delivery to an FCI depot, according to this case. An FIR was lodged on Aug 3, 1979, naming centre in-charge Rajveer Singh, watchman Sharma, etc. Charges under IPC 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) and 468 (forgery) were framed against him and Rajveer in 1999.
I must’ve attended thousands of hearings in four decades and had no strength left to carry on any further,” added Sharma, who maintains he was “framed” in the case. Mishra said Sharma maintained he had been falsely implicated. “The court found serious gaps in the prosecution case and they could not establish the charge that Sharma was on the truck that disappeared,” Mishra added.
Then it was Bulandshahr court. The consignment, however, never reached its destination. By the time the trial progressed, several prosecution witnesses had died, including Rajveer.
Speaking with TOI on Friday, advocate Mishra, who represented Sharma’s case free of cost, said, “The court had granted me the case under LADCS (that provides free legal representation to the eligible beneficiaries).