Nearly six years after being charged with the murder of senior banking executive Siddharth Sanghvi in September 2018, the accused, Sarfaraz Shaikh, now claims that he was only 17 years old at the time of the crime.
Shaikh recently filed a plea requesting that he be prosecuted as a juvenile, asserting that he was born on July 20, 2001. As of September 5, 2018, the date of the alleged murder, he was 17 years, one month, and 16 days old. To support his claim, Shaikh submitted a school record stating that he was admitted in July 2010 and left in July 2012.
However, the prosecution contested Shaikh’s claim, pointing out that the school leaving certificate he submitted was issued by the same school in Bilaspur in January 1993. The prosecution further noted that Shaikh had used this certificate to obtain several other documents, including a driving license and an Aadhaar card, which indicate his age as 25.
After considering both sides, the sessions court observed, “Both school leaving certificates appear to be from the same institution, and thus, the authenticity of the documents needs to be verified.”
The court added, “At this stage, the documents in question require verification, and summoning the concerned authority to present the original records in court would suffice.” The court has summoned the principal of the school to appear with the relevant records. In the meantime, the court has ordered that the trial in the case be put on hold.
Sanghvi went missing on September 5, 2018. He was reportedly killed in the parking area of his office at the Kamala Mills compound by Shaikh, who later dumped his body in a jungle in Kalyan and abandoned Sanghvi’s car in Navi Mumbai.
