Kathua rape and murder case: Hang my daughter’s rapists. Don’t spare the juvenile either. Keep CBI out of it.

UDHAMPUR: The parents of the eight-year-old Kathua girl, who was raped and murdered in January last, on Sunday said they want all the eight accused, including a juvenile, awarded capital punishment. The trial needs to be transferred out of J&K, but the probe should under no circumstances be handed over to the CBI, they emphasised. A petition seeking transfer of the trial will be filed in the Supreme Court on Monday.

“We want justice for our innocent girl. The perpetrators of the crime should be hanged,” the victim girl’s mother told The New Indian Express. The nomadic Bakarwal family was tracked down after a day-long search, as they had left their village earlier than scheduled for the hills.

The mother said the perpetrators had smothered humanity and deserve no lenience. “My daughter was just eight years. They violated her; the body even had burn injuries. She was given electric shock, her legs and limbs were broken and there were injury marks on her face,” the she recalled with tears rolling down her cheeks. The mother had adopted the girl from her sister when she was barely two months old, since her biological daughter had died in an accident.

“Hers was not an age to die. On January 10, she had taken two ponies to a local pond of Rasana around 12.30 pm. As the ponies had gone missing, she went in search. That was when we lost her,” she said. A week later, the girl’s body was recovered near the residence of prime accused Sanji Ram, a priest at Devisthan, the local temple. “We have now learnt she was abducted by Sanji Ram’s nephew, who is a juvenile. He had lured her to the forest area saying he had seen the ponies going that way. He and his associates abducted the child, kept her confined in the temple at night and hid her during the day,” she said.