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The main accused in the Phoolan Devi murder case, Shamsher Singh Rana, refused to undergo a Test Identification Parade on Tuesday.
The law grants an accused the right to refuse the test, where the accused is paraded before eyewitnesses, but makes it clear that the refusal would weaken his case in court.
Rana, who was in police custody was produced at the Patiala House court, where the crime branch had submitted an application for the parade.
Rana claimed that since he was shown several times on television and his picture had appeared in a number of newspapers, he feared the witnesses would be biased against him.
Earlier, on Sunday, Rana's accomplice Dheeraj alias Vicky, who was arrested by police on Saturday near Roorkee, too had refused to go for the TIP.
The eyewitnesses in the case are Balinder Singh, Phoolan's security guard, who was injured in the shoot-out, her personal assistant Kalicharan who is the complainant in the case, Bahadur Singh, the autorickshaw driver in which three accused escaped and Vinod, driver of the scooter into which the killers bumped their car while fleeing.
Meawhile, the crime branch succeeded in getting four more days police custody for Rana. The police contended that they needed to interrogate him for some more time to unravel the motive behind the murder.
The police are likely to take Rana out of Delhi as they believe there were many loopholes in his revelations that need to be corroborated.
Complete coverage of the Phoolan Devi murder case
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