New Delhi: As the nation seeths with anger after the Kathua rape horror in which an eight-year-old was raped and killed, a fresh petition in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court seeking a CBI investigation into the matter claims that police had planted evidence to prove that the crime took place in the temple.
The crime branch during its probe had found that the victim was kidnapped and kept in a temple where she was raped and later killed by the accused. The kingpin in the case was said to be the 60-year-old caretaker of the Devsthan (temple) Sanjhi Ram. Seven others had been named as accused.
Sub-Inspector Anand Dutta and Special Police Officer (SPO) Deepak Khajuria, who were arrested for destroying evidence, have moved the HC and have called the "whole story of Crime Branch of conspiracy" as "laughable".
Their plea, accessed by News18, squarely blames the police for "fiddling" with the crime scene and said that real evidence, which could prove that the eight-year-old was not kept in the temple, was being kept aside.
"The crime branch fiddled with the crime scene after they took up the investigation. The clothes and body of the victim were covered in mud and it was vital evidence to prove that she could not have been kept at the Devsthan, which has a cemented pucca floor,” said the petitioners.
The counsel representing Sanjhi Ram and four others, Ankur Sharma, had earlier told News18 that crime branch was torturing witnesses to get favorable statements. Sticking to the theory, the plea also states that "crime Branch has gone to the extent of manufacturing evidence."
"By collecting the hair strands months from the Devsthan months after the rape occurred to connect it with the victim so as to portray the story that the girl was kept there shows that crime branch is manufacturing evidence,” the plea said.
“It has come in the evidence that Devsthan is washed three times a day including the room in which the girl was allegedly kept. So, there was no possibility of any hair being found after a month of the alleged incident,” it said.
“It is very easy to place a hair strand in the said room and recover it as the hair of any blood relation would have given the same DNA report," reads the plea, questioning the very basis of allegations against the accused.
The petitioners said that the evidence actually placed on record by the crime branch is part of a "conspiracy” to turn “one community against the other”.
"The entire story that a conspiracy was hatched by Sanjhi Ram, who is alleged to have compelled and incited his nephew to kidnap an eight-year-old child and to rape her continuously for about a week and then kill her, is laughable and beyond any sense of belief,” reads the petition.
"The attempts to involve the accused Vishal in the case though he was appearing in the examination at the same time at Meerut by creating evidence against him reflects the mindset of the Crime Branch in creating a case of conspiracy by one community against another community," said the plea.
It was alleged that Vishal Jangotra, son of Sanjhi Ram, had come from Meerut and also raped the girl who was kept abducted by his father. He had later also called his friend to satisfy his lust by taking part in the crime.
The crime branch had said that the motive to drive out the native Bakherwal Muslim community from the area.
Even the Bar association of the state had initially called for a strike and protested the filing of the chargesheet by the SIT and had claimed that only a CBI probe would help in ascertaining the truth. However, the case is slated to be heard in the court of Kathua Sessions Judge on April 28.
The petition by the two cops demanding a CBI probe has called the investigation by the crime branch as "highly tainted" and said that it might have led to escape of the "real culprits."
"Crime Branch investigation may have saved the real culprits who actually committed the crime in order to falsely implicate the accused persons put on trial in furtherance of their pre-conceived notion," said the plea.
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