The police know it, the public knows it, and sometimes even the judge says it aloud: the defendant is guilty.

Yet the rich and powerful walk free in case after criminal case, the scent of state collusion hanging in the air ? as many believe happened in the Jessica Lal murder case.

“I know he is guilty,” additional sessions judge G.P. Thareja had said of accused Santosh Singh, a senior IPS officer’s son, in his courtroom in the Priyadarshini Mattoo rape-and-murder case.

But he was merely expressing his personal belief ? and anguish ? before passing the verdict: acquitted for lack of evidence.

“My hands are tied,” Thareja went on. “As a judge, I can only go by the evidence provided by investigating agencies,” he added before accusing the CBI, which investigated the case, of holding back evidence.

Thareja’s comments triggered an outcry similar to the one after the mass acquittals in the Jessica case which ? the police themselves say ? may have been sabotaged by some officers who were hand-in-glove with the accused.

A similar suspicion clouds another murder trial involving one of those acquitted in the Jessica case ? Vikas Yadav ? where the prosecution seemed too eager to keep a key witness away from the stand.

Vikas, son of former parliamentarian D.P. Yadav, is prime accused in the murder of Nitish Katara, killed allegedly because he got too friendly with Vikas’s sister Bharti.

The prosecution sought to drop Bharti from the witness list, saying Britain, where she studies, had refused to carry out the non-bailable warrant against her. It also argued that she was unlikely to depose against her brother, anyway.

It took an appeal to the high court by Nitish’s mother Neelam to stop that move.

“A (new) warrant is likely to be issued,” a lawyer involved in the case said. Was a conviction likely? The lawyer added: “There’s strong circumstantial evidence but conviction would be difficult if the judge looks at it the way it was done in the Jessica case.”

Delhi University law professor S.C. Raina said that as long as the country lacked a system to “fix accountability” on investigating agencies for their lapses, VIP accused would continue to influence the sleuths.

It’s not always the prosecution, though. A chief judicial magistrate at Jhajjar granted bail to former Test captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi in a poaching case despite lacking the legal powers to do so. The magistrate was suspended on the orders of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Only a designated court under the Wildlife Protection Act can grant bail in such cases, legal experts said. Yet such bail, granted by a court that has no jurisdiction, is valid and it’s up to the prosecution to challenge it in a higher court, they added.

The commonest problem is witnesses turning hostile amid suspicions of bribery or intimidation.

Sanjeev Nanda, a former navy chief’s son, was accused of running over and killing six people in his BMW in 1999, but he is out on bail after three key witnesses turned hostile and a fourth was pulled out. One of them, a survivor of the tragedy, said the vehicle was a truck. Nanda’s lawyer Ramesh Gupta believes the case is as good as dead.

In the 1998 poaching case involving Salman Khan and four other Bollywood stars, the driver of Salman’s jeep, who had said the actor shot the antelope and cut off its head, has disappeared. Later, over half-a-dozen other witnesses did U-turns. Salman has been sentenced to a year in jail but it has been stayed, pending appeal.

In the Jessica trial, though, scores of the bold and beautiful who had watched the murder happen ? and who would be difficult to buy off or terrorise ? never came forward to testify.

The court had slammed the police for shoddy investigation; but Raina, the law professor, pointed out that the judge, had he wanted, could have summoned these eyewitnesses.

Witnesses and prosecutors, of course, come into the picture only when the accused is arrested and charges are framed. Senior IPS officer R.K. Sharma had no such worries for three-and-a-half years after journalist Shivani Bhatnagar was murdered in January 1999.

Sharma was arrested only in 2002. Advocate B.D. Goswami, who is defending one of the alleged hired killers, smells something fishy. “All the evidence against Sharma was collected after July 2002,” he said. The trial is in the final stages.

Captain Satish Sharma was luckier: it was the Union government that ensured the former petroleum minister would not stand trial in the petrol pump allotment scam. “The government refused to sanction his prosecution but other accused will have to face trial,” advocate Abhishek Rai said.

Politicians, expectedly, are the most difficult to nail. Union minister Shibu Soren is headed for acquittal in the murder of his private secretary, Shashinath Jha, Soren’s advocate Sanjeev believes. The CBI has failed to prove the identity of the body, with four DNA tests giving negative results though a skull superimposition test suggested the body was Jha’s.

Advocate Kumar Bankatesh, however, feels it’s not only the powerful who get away. The conviction rate in India is very low, he said ? but when it’s a VIP in the dock, everybody gets to know about it.