SC orders transfer of Kathua suspects to Gurdaspur jail

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 9

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered transfer of seven accused facing trial in the Kathua gang rape and murder case from Kathua sub-jail to Gurdaspur.

They are being tried at a court in Pathankot after the Supreme Court shifted the trial from Jammu and Kashmir.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra passed the order without issuing any notice to the accused or giving them any hearing, despite Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh pointing out that procedural norms required that they should be heard before an order was passed against them.

The Bench, however, ordered the Jammu and Kashmir Government to bear the travel expenses in case relatives of the accused wanted to travel from Kathua to Gurdaspur to meet them in jail.

The Bench also ordered that the trial judge and the special public prosecutor to be provided security by the Punjab government and the Jammu and Kashmir Government respectively after senior counsel India Jaising, representing the victim’s family, pointed out that there were reports that the two could be at risk.

The Bench, which also included Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Indu Malhotra, however, rejected Jaising’s plea for recording of evidence by video-conferencing and gag against the media.

The Jammu and Kashmir Police filed a status report and requested the court not to disclose it. “There was some sensitive information in para four of the report,” senior counsel Shekhar Nafade, representing the state of Jammu and Kashmir, told the Bench.

The Bench gave the state police eight weeks to file a supplementary charge sheet in the case after Nafade said further investigation would take six to eight weeks.

It said orders passed by the trial court could be challenged before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

There are 221 witnesses in the case, the court was told.

The victim—an eight-year-old girl from a nomadic community—had disappeared from near her home in a village in Kathua on January 10. Her body was found in the same locality a week later. The Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police had taken up the probe into the case on January 22 and filed a charge sheet against seven accused and a separate charge sheet against a juvenile accused in a court in Kathua district on April 9. The minor girl was allegedly kidnapped, drugged and raped inside a place of worship before being killed, police had alleged.

The top court had earlier transferred the trial from Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir to Pathankot and ordered a day-to-day "in-camera" trial in the case.

On Monday, the top court also directed the trial judge to ensure that the proceedings were conducted in-camera and none, other than accused, their lawyers, special public prosecutor and court staff remained present during the trial.