MP High Court Orders Fresh Autopsy in Twisha Sharma Death; Husband Surrenders

A 33-year-old model and actor named Twisha Sharma was found hanging in her matrimonial home in Bhopal's Katara Hills area on May 12. Five months into her marriage to Samarth Singh, she was dead. What followed was not a straightforward investigation but a case that would draw scrutiny from India's highest courts, raise questions about judicial impartiality, and expose the fragility of truth-seeking when power and family connections intersect.

On Friday, Samarth Singh walked into a courtroom in Jabalpur after ten days of evading arrest. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had issued orders directing him to surrender, and he complied. But his appearance sparked immediate objection from Twisha Sharma's legal representatives. Advocate Anurag Srivastav, representing the family, told reporters that Singh had no authority to surrender before the District Court in Jabalpur. The High Court's directive, he argued, specified surrender either before the trial court in Bhopal or before the investigating officer. The choice of venue mattered—it suggested, in the lawyer's reading, that Singh was being steered toward a more lenient process. Srivastav went further, alleging that Singh was receiving protection because his mother, Giribala Singh, is a retired district judge. The implication hung in the air: a dead woman, a powerful family, and a system that might bend.

The circumstances of Twisha Sharma's death fueled these suspicions. Her family alleged that she had endured continuous dowry demands and physical assault during her five months of marriage. They pointed to injury marks on her body that, they claimed, were inadequately explained in the initial post-mortem examination. Whether she was murdered or coerced into taking her own life remained the central, unanswered question. An FIR had been registered against both Samarth Singh and his mother, charging them with dowry death and cruelty. But the family's confidence in the local investigation had already eroded.

The High Court's response was decisive. It ordered a second autopsy to be conducted by a team of experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi. The court also directed authorities to preserve Twisha Sharma's body at ultra-low temperatures, a measure designed to protect the integrity of forensic evidence and prevent degradation that might obscure the truth. These orders reflected judicial concern that the initial investigation had been compromised or incomplete.

The case had already captured national attention, driven partly by the allegations of dowry harassment but also by the broader question of whether influence could shield the accused from genuine accountability. The involvement of a retired judge as the accused's mother added a layer of institutional complexity. When the High Court subsequently ordered CBI involvement, it signaled that state-level authorities alone could not be trusted with the investigation. The case was no longer merely a matter for local police or district courts. It had become a test of whether the judicial system could investigate itself fairly when one of its own was implicated.

As Twisha Sharma's body remained in cold storage and the machinery of a second autopsy began to turn, the case settled into a new phase. The public scrutiny would not fade. The legal questions—about jurisdiction, about the legitimacy of surrender, about the adequacy of the first investigation—would persist. What remained constant was the fact of her death and the family's insistence that it be properly explained. The High Court's orders suggested that someone in the judiciary agreed.