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Supreme Court orders fresh trial of Kathua rape-murder of 8-year-old Asifa

IndiaSupreme Court orders fresh trial of Kathua rape-murder of 8-year-old Asifa

The Supreme Court in Jammu and Kashmir ordered a fresh trial of the accused in the 2018 rape-cum-murder of 8-year-old Asifa Bano

In 2018, eight-year-old Asifa Bano was drugged, brutally gang-raped by seven men in a temple, and then killed.  On a trial sentencing, six men to life imprisonment, one, the “juvenile” was acquitted.  Today, the Apex Court set aside the orders of the Chief Judicial Magistrate at Kathua and the high court which had held that the accused Shubam Sangra was a juvenile and hence to be tried separately.

In the latest update relating to the shocking gang rape and murder case of an eight-year-old nomadic girl Asifa Bano in Kathua, the Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside a Jammu and Kashmir Court order and ordered a fresh trial of the accused in the alleged 2018 rape-cum-murder of an eight-year-old girl from a nomadic community.

“The accused is to be tried as an adult and not a juvenile in the Kathua case,” a bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Ajay Rastogi and also comprising Justice J B Pardiwala, ruled. The Supreme Court passed the judgment on the issue of juvenility of one of the accused, who was earlier held as a juvenile by the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court Kathua.

The Jammu and Kashmir government had claimed that the High Court had wrongly affirmed the order of a trial court holding the main accused to be a minor. “The medical opinion regarding the age in absence of any other conclusive evidence should be considered to determine the age range of the accused. “Whether the medical evidence can be relied upon or not depends on the value of the evidence.

“Thus order passed by Medical opinion regarding age in absence of any other conclusive evidence should be considered to determine the age range of the accused. Whether medical evidence can be relied upon or not depends on the value of the evidence,” a bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and JB Pardiwala remarked.

It set aside the orders of the Chief Judicial Magistrate at Kathua and the high court which had held that the accused Shubam Sangra was a juvenile and hence to be tried separately.

“We set aside the judgments of the CJM Kathua and the high court and hold that the accused was not a juvenile at the time of the commission of offence,” Justice Pardiwala said while pronouncing the verdict.

The Kathua rape case

The Kathua rape case involved the abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano, by six men and a juvenile, in January 2018 in the Rasana Village near Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, India.  Asifa Bano belonged to the nomadic Bakarwal community in Jammu and Kashmir.

The examination by the doctors found that the girl had been drugged with a sedative before she was raped and murdered. The forensic examination stated that Bano had been raped multiple times by different men and that she had been strangled to death, as well as hit in the head with a heavy stone.

At that time, a charge sheet for the case was filed, the accused were arrested and the trial began in Kathua on 16 April 2018.

The child was not found for a week before her body was discovered by the villagers a kilometer away from the village.

The incident made national news when charges were filed against eight men in April 2018. The arrests of the accused led to protests by the Panthers Party and other local groups, who sought justice for the victim.

A protest in support of the accused men was attended by two ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party, both of whom later resigned. The gang rape and murder, as well as the support the accused received, sparked widespread outrage in India and worldwide.

On 10 June 2019, six of the seven defendants were convicted and one was acquitted. Three of those convicted were sentenced to life imprisonment and the remaining three to five years. In October 2019, the court ordered a First Information Report (FIR) against 6 members of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which probed the case, for allegedly torturing and coercing witnesses to give false statements.

Sanji Ram was found to be the main accused in the rape case. He is the priest of the family temple, where the rape allegedly took place. The Hindu community of the village prays three times a day in that same temple according to local people. His son Vishal and his nephew, a juvenile, were also accused in the case. The others who have been accused are Deepak Khajuria and Parvesh Kumar, who are police officers; Tilak Raj, a head constable and Arvind Dutta, a sub-inspector.

The police contested the claim that the nephew Shubam Sangra is a juvenile. Vishal Jangotra claimed to be in Meerut attending an exam. However, according to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), his signature does not match the signature on the exam attendance sheet.

You might also want to read https://hamslivenews.com/2022/08/18/rahul-gandhi-accuses-bjp-of-supporting-criminals-releasing-them/

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