Verdict in Kathua rape-murder case likely on June 10

A court in Punjab’s Pathankot will pronounce its verdict in the horrific January 2018 rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua on June 10, the prosecution said on Monday.

According to the charge sheet filed in the case, the eight-year-old Muslim girl, belonging to a nomadic community, was strangled and killed with a stone after a week in captivity during which she was drugged and raped repeatedly. Her killing, and the arrest of the accused roiled the state. Investigators said the original motive of what started off as a kidnapping was to frighten away from the area the herding community to which the girl belonged .

The in camera trial in the case was completed on Monday after the defence concluded its arguments. “The court has reserved its judgment, which will be pronounced on June 10 at 10 am,’’ said Harminder Singh, the chief prosecuting officer of Jammu and Kashmir police’s crime branch.

The Supreme Court shifted the case to Punjab in May 2018 after the girl’s family and lawyer said they faced death threats. Earlier, a group of lawyers prevented crime branch officers from submitting a charge sheet in the case in a Kathua court on April 9, 2018.

The case was shifted to Punjab two months after a shutdown was observed in Kathua on March 3, 2018, and the people took to the streets against the arrest of the eight accused in the case.

Two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers, Choudhary Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, in the then People’s Democratic Party-BJP alliance government in Jammu and Kashmir, too, joined the protests under the banner of the Hindu Ekta Manch. They were sacked two months before the government fell in June 2018 after the BJP withdrew its support to the alliance.

Harminder Singh said the court has allowed the prosecution and the defence to further submit any points of law or references if they want to before the verdict is pronounced.

The Jammu and Kashmir high court and the Supreme Court have been monitoring the trial of the accused, Sanji Ram, Deepak Khajuria, Tilak Raj, Anand Dutta, Parvesh Kumar, and Vishal. The accused include a retired local government employee and two police officers. The trial of the other accused in the case, a juvenile, is going on in Kathua. The seven accused are lodged in a prison in Punjab’s Gurdaspur.

As many as 114 witnesses recorded their statements in the case before district and sessions judge Tejwinder Singh. The Jammu and Kashmir police’s crime branch filed a charge sheet running into over 400 pages on April 10, 2018. A 1,000-page supplementary charge sheet was filed three months later.

The government ordered a magisterial probe in the case two days after the girl was found dead on January 17, 2018. The first arrest, that of the juvenile, was made the same day. The main accused, Sanji Ram, remained on the run for two months before he surrendered to the police.

First Published: Jun 04, 2019 10:22 IST