Court acquits ex-judge, family in 2013 Ggm ‘dowry death’ case

The death triggered widespread attention due to Ravneet’s position in the judiciary and the circumstances under which the body was discovered.

A Special CBI Court in Panchkula on Tuesday acquitted Ravneet Garg, a former chief judicial magistrate (CJM) of Gurugram, and his parents – retired sessions judge KK Garg and Rachna Garg – in the 2013 dowry death case of Geetanjali Garg, bringing to an end a 12-year-long legal battle marked by shifting testimonies and inconclusive evidence.

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The case dates back to July 17, 2013, when the body of Geetanjali Garg (28), Ravneet’s wife, was found at the Police Lines Parade Ground in Gurugram. She had suffered four bullet injuries, and Ravneet Garg’s licensed revolver was recovered near the body. The death triggered widespread attention due to Ravneet’s position in the judiciary and the circumstances under which the body was discovered.

Local police first investigated the incident as a suspected suicide, but the probe was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in August 2013 after the Haryana government recommended an independent inquiry. In its charge sheet filed in 2016, the CBI dropped the charge of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, choosing instead to proceed under provisions relating to dowry death, criminal conspiracy and cruelty.

The prosecution’s case suffered a major setback when Geetanjali’s brother, Pradeep Aggarwal, the prime complainant and key prosecution witness, turned hostile during the trial. In his testimony in July 2018, Aggarwal retracted his earlier allegations and deposed that Ravneet “never mistreat” Geetanjali nor subjected her to cruelty over dowry. He further said that no demands for a car or a flat were ever made by the Garg family.

Aggarwal also told the court that he could not definitively say whether the accused were responsible for Geetanjali’s death, particularly as the investigation had failed to establish who had fired the fatal shots. His testimony substantially weakened the prosecution’s case and undermined the CBI’s claims of sustained harassment and dowry-related pressure.

The defence argued that there was no evidence of discord or cruelty in the marriage. Senior advocates Terminder Singh, Manbir Rathee and Pramod Bali contended that Geetanjali had spoken normally with her family on the day of her death and had made no complaint of harassment. They also pointed to Ravneet Garg’s alibi, stating that he was attending a video conference with 18 other judicial officers, chaired by the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court, at the time of the incident.

During the course of the investigation, the CBI conducted polygraph and brain mapping tests on Ravneet Garg, but both yielded inconclusive results. Allegations that the family had demanded cash, jewellery and luxury vehicles also failed to stand up to judicial scrutiny. Ravneet Garg, who was suspended from service following his arrest in 2016, spent nearly two years in custody before being granted bail in 2018.