One acquitted for benefit of doubt
PATHANKOT (Punjab), June 10: A court today sentenced three men including a temple caretaker to life imprisonment till last breath for the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir shortly after convicting them along with three others for the ghastly crime that shook the nation 17 months ago.
Sanji Ram, the mastermind and caretaker of the ‘devasthanam’ (temple) where the crime took place in January last year, Deepak Khajuria, a Special Police Officer, and Parvesh Kumar, a civilian–the three main accused–were spared death penalty, a punishment sought by the prosecution during the year-long in-camera trial in the court of judge Tejwinder Singh here.
The three were convicted under Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) sections relating to criminal conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, gang rape, destruction of evidence, drugging the victim and common intention, prosecution lawyer Santokh Singh told reporters outside the court.
They were also awarded different jail terms for various offences under the RPC which will run concurrently with the life term besides a fine of Rs one lakh each, Singh said. If they do not deposit the fine, they will have to serve additional six months in jail, he added.
Singh said a life term means they will be in jail till the end of their natural life.
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The other three accused–Sub Inspector Anand Dutta, Head Constable Tilak Raj and Special Police Officer Surender Verma — were convicted for destruction of evidence to cover up and handed down five years in jail and Rs 50,000 fine each, Singh said.
The court acquitted the seventh accused Vishal Jangotra, son of Sanji Ram, giving him the ‘benefit of doubt’, according to Mubeen Farooqi, who represented the victim’s family in the court.
The court pronounced the much-awaited verdict away from the gaze of media which gathered in full strength outside the premises. All the 7 accused were present in the court room.
According to eyewitness accounts from inside the courtroom, where the media was barred, Ram and Khajuria reacted with shock when the operative part of the verdict was read out by the judge. Some family members of the two men collapsed in the court complex on hearing the news of them being sent to jail for life.
A 15-page charge sheet filed in April last year said the eight-year-old girl was kidnapped on January 10 that year and was raped in captivity in a small village temple, exclusively manned by Ram, after keeping her sedated for four days. She was later bludgeoned to death, it said.
The Crime Branch of J&K Police had filed the charge sheet against eight persons, including a juvenile.
The trial against the juvenile is yet to begin as his petition on determining his age is to be heard by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.
The prosecution team, comprising lawyers J K Chopra, S S Basra, Harminder Singh and Bhupinder Singh, said it demanded capital punishment for the main accused and may go in for appeal against the sole acquittal.
The day-to-day trial commenced in the first week of June last year at the district and sessions court in Pathankot in the neighbouring State of Punjab, about 100 km from Jammu and 30 km from Kathua, after the Supreme Court ordered on May 7, 2018 that the case be shifted out of J and K.
The Apex Court order came after lawyers in Kathua prevented Crime Branch officials from filing a charge sheet in the sensational case.
The Crime Branch held Ram, his juvenile nephew and his son Vishal, and two SPOs Khajuria and Verma. Raj and Dutta, who allegedly took Rs 4 lakh from Ram and destroyed crucial evidence, were later arrested.
The charges of rape and murder were framed by the District and Sessions Judge against seven of the eight accused.
The court framed charges under relevant Sections of the RPC including Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder) and 376-D (gang-rape), according to the prosecution.
The court also framed charges of destruction of evidence and causing hurt by poisoning under Section 328 of the RPC.
All the accused, barring the juvenile, were shifted to the Gurdaspur jail in Punjab following an intervention by the Supreme Court which also restricted appearance of the defence lawyers and limited it to one or maximum of two per accused.
The charge sheet said the girl had gone missing while grazing horses.
Investigators said the accused juvenile had abducted the girl on the pretext of helping her find her horses.
The abduction, rape and killing of the child was part of a carefully planned strategy to remove the minority nomadic community from the area, the charge sheet said.
Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir Police today said it may challenge the acquittal of the seventh accused in the Kathua gang rape-cum-murder case.
IGP Ahfadul Mujtaba of the state police Crime Branch, which investigated the horrific gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl of a nomadic tribe in J&K’s Kathua in January 2018, said the police will challenge the acquittal of the seventh accused “if needed”.
The IGP talked of challenging the acquittal of one accused while welcoming the conviction of six others.
“We welcome this verdict except that one person has been acquitted,” said Inspector General of Police Ahfadul Mujtaba.
The IGP said the police were yet to get the copy of the judgment.
“Once we examine it and if needed, we will challenge it in the Punjab and Haryana High Court,” said Mujtaba.
“Actually (seventh accused) Vishal had taken the alibi that he was not present there (at the scene of the crime), though we have eyewitnesses’ account of his presence there. We have eyewitnesses who said he was very much there on the day of the incident,” the IGP said.
The court, however, has accepted his alibi, said the IGP, adding the police would examine under what circumstances Vishal was acquitted.
Asked how the police tackled the difficult situation and carried out the investigation amid the highly polarised atmosphere, the Crime Branch chief said, “Any professional investigating agency will go by witnesses and evidence.”
“When you go to a court of law, it has to be judged as per the evidence. You cannot bring a cock and bull story and present it to the court. You have to work on the merits and the evidence of the case,” he said.
Terming the case as a “challenging” one, the IGP said the police had presented 114 prosecution witnesses before the court despite several problems.
“Ensuring the witnesses to be present in the court every day was quite a challenge, so was ensuring their safety and protection,” said Mujtaba.
“But we succeeded in securing the conviction of the six out of seven accused,” he added.
Asked about some defence lawyers’ statement that they would challenge the conviction of the six accused, the IGP said everybody has the right to go to the higher court.
“The case has to be fought in the court, not in the streets. If needed, we will also move the high court against the acquittal of one accused,” the IGP said.
Meanwhile, Prosecution lawyers in the Kathua gangrape-and-murder case were heckled outside the court premises by the family members of the six men convicted on Monday for the ghastly crime.
Harminder Singh and Bhupinder Singh, the lawyers for the Jammu and Kashmir CID who secured justice for the eight-year-old girl, faced visibly agitated kin of the accused who hurled abuses at them as they came out from the court of Pathankot District and Sessions Judge Tejwinder Singh.
The Punjab police came to their rescue, pushing the crowd aside so that the lawyers could leave safely.
Relatives of the main accused Sanji Ram, the caretaker of the devsthanam (temple) where the crime took place, and special police officer Deepak Khajuria collapsed in the court complex as they heard the verdict.
According to eyewitness accounts from inside the courtroom, where media was barred, Ram and Khajuria were visibly shaken after hearing the judgement. (PTI)
Perpetrators acted as if law of jungle prevails: Judge
Holding that perpetrators of the gangrape and murder of a girl in Kathua acted as if there is a “law of jungle” prevalent in the society, Judge Tejwinder Singh summed up the enormity of the crime with a touching couplet by Mirza Ghalib which says that hunters had placed the net near a nest and the young one was caught before it could take its first flight.
In his judgment after hearing arguments from both sides for 367 days, Singh sentenced three accused to life imprisonment for criminal conspiracy and murder and three more to five years in jail for destruction of evidence. One accused was acquitted.
Singh started his order with the couplet from Ghalib’s ghazal — “Pinha tha daam-e-sakht qareeb ashiyaan ke, udhne hi nahi paye the ki girftar hum hue”.
Also cited by the Supreme Court in a 2011 case of murder of a sex worker in West Bengal, the couplet poignantly summed up the Kathua case which shook the conscience of the nation.
Singh said the couplet applies squarely to the facts of the present case.
“An unfortunate kidnapping, drugging, wrongful confinement, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl has set the criminal law into motion and have put the accused persons under “Sword of Damocles’ for a fair trial,” he said.
After an in-camera trial which was held out of media gaze as per instructions of the Supreme Court, Singh delivered his judgement today.
“In the present case, facts are many but truth is one that under a criminal conspiracy, an innocent eight-year-old minor girl has been kidnapped, wrongfully confined, drugged, raped and ultimately murdered. The perpetrators of this crime have acted in such a manner as if there is a ‘law of jungle’ prevalent in the society,” Singh said. (PTI)
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