Tuesday afternoon was a tense time in Bhopal. The special CBI courtroom was jam-packed. Sweaty and loud. Samarth Singh was standing quietly in front of Special Judge Shobhana Bhalave along with his mother Giribala Singh. After five days of intensive police interrogation, they had come to the end of it. The investigating agency requested that they not be placed in their lockup. Not today anyway. Rather, the judge immediately directed the mother and son to a standard jail cell. They have been placed in judicial custody for the next 14 days. The day marked on all of our calendars this day is June 16th
How We Got Here
All this terrible story began on May 12th. Twisha Sharma was only 33. She used to model. Originally she came from Noida. She was found dead over in the Katara Hills area of Bhopal, in her marital home. Initially, it appeared to be a normal hanging. Her family, however, started shouting murder right away. It’s only been since December 2025 that she is married. It was only five months later that she passed away. Her parents and siblings blamed her new husband and his mother. They were victims to months of never-ending mental agony. They alleged very aggressive demands for cash and dowry
A Former Judge Fights Back
Giribala Singh is certainly not the typical suspect. In fact, she was also the one who was a district judge. She’s intimately familiar with the criminal code and she knows how local courts work backwards and forwards. On Tuesday she decided to abandon the lawyers, for a time, and present her case directly to the bench. It was a very heated debate. She informed the judge that she felt “like the hunted animal”. She was upset by the news cameras that were always pushing her. She practically screamed, “End the media trial now! The media’s physical lives were in danger on the streets! It’s a tremendous and hard fall from grace for a former judicial officer
The Jabalpur Brawl
She didn’t stop at grumbling about the irritating reporters. There was a heavy slur at the opposition from Giribala. She asserted that Anurag Srivastava, who is defending Twisha’s family, assaulted her son. In fact, Srivastava had assaulted Samarth during a previous tumultuous hearing at the Jabalpur court, the court said in her statement. A fast response was provided by Srivastava who fired back to defend. He totally denied ever touching Samarth. He informed Judge Bhalave that he would just need to check the CCTV footage at the Jabalpur complex if they wanted the real picture. Then the attorney hurled a dirty punch at him. He asked Samarth to get up and announce to the court room where he was hiding before he was arrested.
Dummies On The Terrace
The accused was brought back to the house in Katara Hills by the CBI only a day before this shouting match was held in the courtroom. It was the middle of the day Friday. They had to see just what was supposed to occur on May 12th. Investigators literally brought a dummy body up to the terrace where Twisha was found hanging. Forensic experts compelled Samarth and Giribala to go through the entire chain of events. That night, they had them recounting their precise movements minute by minute.
What a great way to begin the day!Angry At The Process!
Even this procedural walk through became an acrimonious debate. Giribala was angry over the federal agents’ handling of the transport. On Tuesday, she told the judge the CBI vehicles left her off a couple of houses down the street, rather than directly at her home. She was forced to walk the rest of the way in the public. But she really didn’t want them to get their hands on video of all that recreation of the crime scene, so to speak, that was made by those local news outlets. The entire process was a serious violation of procedure, she said.
Holding The Cards
The central agency was cool as all of them in the court in front of the judge. They said they had recently captured a large collection of electronic devices. The laptops and smartphones are now in a sterile lab where they await forensic data extraction. Also, they will need to talk to many more people. It will have a list of witnesses to call and statements to take. They had told the court that the judicious custody of the two accused would be best now. This was a deliberate leaving of a door open, though. The CBI explicitly informed that if any suspicious activity in the information retrieved from the phone is found, Samarth and Giribala will be brought back to police remand for “harsher” interrogation.
The Medical Mess
The medical reports also have a very dirty situation going on. The very first post-mortem ruffled a lot of feathers. Twisha’s family was not convinced. They thought that she was not hurt physically as there was not a single mention of it on her body by the doctor. They noted, too, one massive conflict of interest. Giribala’s sister was a senior surgeon in the local AIIMS! The Madhya Pradesh High Court was ultimately called into action. They ordered a totally fresh look. A special team of 4 doctors was called in from AIIMS Delhi, just to carry out a second autopsy of the body in Bhopal. The CBI are yet to receive those final lab results.
Trading Insults
This case fought furiously in front of television cameras, before the final handcuffs appeared in late May. In fact, Giribala conducted her own press conferences. She was all out on the attack. She told reporters Twisha was “so addicted to drugs she was not living life. She said her daughter-in-law suffered from a serious case of schizophrenia and was swallowing a lot of psychiatric medicine. She even mentioned an old abortion and cut to the chase calling the suicide “irresponsible conduct.” Twisha’s relatives erupted at the TV screen. Her sister-in-law, Rashi Sharma, denounced the wild allegations as “desperate character assassination. The retired judge was charged with attempting to tarnish a deceased woman’s reputation for the purpose of saving his own.
