Jammu court orders registration of FIR against SIT probing Kathua rape and murder case

Jammu court on Tuesday ordered the police to register an FIR against the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the Kathua rape and murder case. Talking to Zee News, advocate Ankur Sharma, who is representing the accused in this case, said that the court examined all the evidence provided by him before the court and then ordered the police to register an FIR against all the officers of the SIT. The court has ordered the Jammu SSP to register the FIR by November 7, 2019.

On June 10, 2019, a special court in Punjab's Pathankot had convicted six of the seven accused in the brutal rape and murder case of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir. Out of the six convicted, three were awarded life term while three were sentenced to a jail term of five years. Vishal Jangotra, who was also made an accused in the case by the police, was let off by the court which relied on a Zee News report that showed him being present in a place several hundred kilometres away from the crime scene. Zee News had accessed CCTV footage of an ATM in Muzzafarnagar in which Vishal was seen withdrawing money on the day when the incident took place.

After getting released, Vishal had said in an interview to Zee News that he was ruthlessly tortured by the police to own up to an offence he did not commit. Vishal also claimed that he and his friends were tortured by the police with the sole intention of destroying his family.

The court had said in its verdict that the evidence broadly supports the news clip of Zee News relating to the presence of accused Vishal Jangotra alias Shamma at Meeranpur, Muzaffarnagar during the period of occurrence. The court had also appreciated Zee News, particularly the Editor-in-Chief of Zee News Sudhir Chaudhary and staff for trying bringing out the actual truth in this case.

The Jammu and Kashmir police had said in its chargesheet that the victim was abducted on January 10, 2018 and held captive at a temple in a village in Kathua. The chargesheet also mentioned that the girl was kept unconscious by her abductors for four days, during which she was raped and she was ultimately murdered.